Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - History of the University (Powell) [PAGE 534]

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Report of a Committee on Location of the University

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conventions which have been called to deliberate on the subject. Nine tenths of the people of Illinois are today a unit on the above propositions. The charter proposed was read by Gen. Puller at the opening of the present session of the legislature to the board of the State Agricultural Society and received their unanimous public endorsement and approval. But these just and most needful ends were at last defeated. We deem it indispensable that the societies and conventions appointing this committee, and that the people and taxpayers of the state should know truly how this was done, and why it was done. At the Agricultural rooms above mentioned, Dr. Scroggs of Champaign, for the first time appeared in our meetings, and spoke of a magnificent building which their people proposed to offer to the society. We were glad to hear it and freely admitted him to our counsels and plans. He was understood by all to assent heartily to the cardinal principles laid down as above stated; certainly he did not object to them. Judge then our surprise when a short time after our meeting the "Champaign ring," as it was called, appeared at the capital in force of some twenty or more confederates and lobby members, backed as it was said, with five thousand dollars in cash, led by Dr. Scroggs and a wandering preacher by the name of Stoughton, and demanding the immediate location of the University at Champaign, in consideration of the unfinished buildings and grounds offered to the state, which they said were worth $120,000. They insisted that it should be done, before any enabling act should be passed, or any other counties invested with any legal rights or power of competition. They still professed to wish to keep the funds undivided according to the previous agreement, and oftentimes renewed their pledges to that effect. But before the session closed they virtually violated this pledge also, by admitting into their bill an agreement to locate one branch of the University at Chicago, and another in Egypt, so as to secure the votes of these sections. Still, true to their native instinct, however, they took care so to word the bill that they could cheat their Chicago and Egyptian allies out of the consideration, after they had secured their votes; as the bill