Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - History of the University (Powell) [PAGE 219]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

Illinois Considers Disposition of Donation

189

to frame a bill and urge its passage by the next legislature,20 So much interest was manifest in the subject that three special meetings were held during the fair to consider it. Both General R, J. Oglesby, republican candidate for governor, and Governor Richard Yates, spoke at one of the meetings, and resolutions which were passed later stated that they considered both men to have pledged themselves for the cause of the agriculturists. The governor endeavored to justify his appointment of the commission, and admitted that he had not given as much attention as he should to the college situation. Resolutions were offered asking him to withdraw his appointment but they were not pressed to a vote.21 The agricultural press contained many articles during October, 1864, urging farmers to be at the polls on election day and to see to it that the right men were elected. Early in the same month, John P. Reynolds called the congressional committee, of which he was chairman, to meet at Springfield on Tuesday, December 6, 1864, "for the purpose of reporting the views of the Committee to the appropriate Committees of the next General Assembly."22 The chairman of the governor's commission, W. W. Evarts, called his committee to meet at Springfield the same day, and invited the committee of the state agricultural society to meet with them and to assist in their deliberations. At the same time he called a preliminary meeting of his committee for the second Tuesday in November in Chicago. At this preliminary meeting the governor appeared and stated to the members that since appointing them he had learned that a committee had been chosen by the agricultural society to bring the whole matter before the legislature and that, in order to avoid confusion, he desired the committee appointed by him to disband. After passing resolutions the committee acquiesced in the governor's request. Soon after the governor sent Turner a copy of the resolutions passed by his commission on disbanding. One would think that the success won by the agriculturists in this affair would have pleased Turner, but as he wrote Rey"Illinois State Agricultural Society, Transactions, 5: 986-987 and also seo appendix p. 475. ^Illinois School Reports, 1886-1888, p. cxxxii. n Prairie Farmer, October 8, 1864.

m