Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - History of the University (Powell) [PAGE 536]

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Report of a Committee on Location of the University 495 ment of the State Horticultural Society of their plans during its session in Champaign in December. The effort failed; that society could not be made to stultify itself by retracting its committal to a free and fair competition among all the counties, Champaign included, for the location of the institution. The chairman of your committee became for the first time aware of the outline of the plot that has since been consummated. He was told at the time, by a member of the ring, that the whole plot was planned and irrevocably fixed, that it would be utterly in vain for him or for any of the members of the state committee to attempt to resist it. Their "arrangements were all made," as they said, "and the thing would certainly.be put through.'' He was explicitly told that if he would turn in and co-operate with them, he might have the charter written just as he pleased, and they would elect him Regent of the University, which he said, they all desired, and we would all take hold and work in harmony and build up a splendid University. On his replying that he had been a teacher for thirty years of his life, and had, years ago, left the employment with the determination never to return to it again; and that at any rate, he thought that such an act of perfidy to his own convictions, and to the various societies and conventions, in whose behalf and under whose explicit instructions he was professing to act, would ill fit him for such a responsible position. Their speaker then began to use threats, and distinctly declared that if such obstinacy was persisted in by the committee they should be compelled in the last resort, to do as they did at the last session, and go in with Chicago and Egypt for a similar division of the fund, and then they would be sure of success; and the responsibility of injuring the institution would rest on those of the state committee who should thus insist on the full rights of other counties. At the opening of the session of the legislature, their senator told the chairman, as a friend, substantially the same things and advised him not to resist them—for the same reasons, as it would only result in injury, or at least trouble, to himself, with no possible good to the state; as their ring was too strong to be broken. This new ring in the legislature now referred to was understood—before the legislature commenced—to embrace the fol-