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Caption: Book - History of the University (Powell)
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The University Located 267 obtain the "chair of moral philosophy " in the institution, turned "state's evidence." It seems probable rather that the extended article was written by a clever reporter who had been in touch with the situation at Springfield during the preceding months. Behind the tone of raillery and slang expressions there are some very keen thrusts and like the report of Turner it was in its statements uncomfortably near the truth. The article declared that the " r i n g " had a corruption fund, that the Urbana-Champaign institute was a speculative scheme that was a failure, that the press was subsidized, that a suite of rooms at the Leland was engaged at the trifling cost of $30 a day; it estimated Champaign's offering as having cost the county $200,000 and the "corruption" fund at $29,800 and then rehearsed a lot of the arguments to be used in Champaign county to persuade the people to vote the bond issue. The Urbana-Champaign people were not to be defeated even by such clever attacks. Meetings were arranged in the various precincts of the county and speakers explained the benefits that would come to the county if the bond issue was passed. The election for or against an appropriation of $100,000 to secure the industrial university was held on April 10,1867, and carried in favor of the appropriation by a vote of two thousand two hundred and ninety-one to five hundred and eighty-two.21 Already the board of trustees of the industrial university had held its first meeting in Springfield and had organized for work. It now became imperative that the deeds and titles to the various lands and other property offered the state should be made secure and ready to present to the board of trustees at its next meeting in May at the institute building. The many details in regard to the purchase of the land for the UrbanaChampaign institute, the purchase by the county of these and other lands, and the transfer to the state cover a period of some eight years and the whole subject is now at a distance of fifty years. It has been difficult, therefore, to get a clear and accurate account. The following statements have been carefully verified from the records and compared with the best contemporary accounts from various sources. ^Reports of the board of supervisors, April 23, 1867, p. 513.
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