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Caption: Book - History of the University (Powell)
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f Illinois Considers Disposition of Donation 179 In the house the bill was referred to the committee on counties which reported it favorably, and on February 13, it passed the house with a vote of 62 to 0 and was signed by the governor the next day. 2 On the same day that the act accepting the donation of congress was signed, the legislature provided by joint resolution for a committee to be composed of three from the house and two from the senate to inquire into the best method of disposing of the grant from congress. The preamble to the resolution stated that one of the reasons for the investigation was because application had been made to the general assembly by various parties who desired to be invested with the benefits of this grant. /Naturally the question arises as to the identity of the parties so eager in the interests of the industrial classes of the state that they were beseeching the general assembly, even before the acceptance of the Federal act, to invest them with the benefits of the grant. As one might expect it was not the group of devoted men who had made the grant possible but it was a faction, or factions of the small college men, who had striven hard from 1852 to 1857 to get possession of the college and seminary funds, who had called the plans of the industrial league and of Turner "chimeras,'' "absurd," and "ungodly," but who, now that the grant was within reach of the state, pushed forward in almost unseemly haste, to secure for their own institutions whatever part of the congressional bequest they possibly could. _The activity of the college men began as early as January 'i 27, 1863, when a memorial of the trustees of Shurtleff college in relation to an agricultural eolllege was presented in the senate by Mr. Underwood of St. Clair county, and referred to the committee on education. On January 30, Mr. Mason of Knox county, chairman of the joint committee presented a "bill for an act to provide a college for the benefit of agriculture and the mechanic arts." This was referred to his committee and reported to the senate, February 2, under the title of "Incorporation of sundry agricultural colleges," with a substitute which was adopted and ordered engrossed for third reading. On February 11, this bill was read a third time. It now bore the title mouse Journal, 1863, p. 116, 201, 288, 621. The act is printed in appendix p. 588. •
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