Jonathan Baldwin Turner and Justin Smith Morrill

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Jonathan Baldwin Turner and Justin Smith Morrill

• Suzanne P. van Rijn deserves the credit for the
  majority of the information in these slides.

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Jonathan Baldwin Turner

• educator
• lecturer
• farmer
• reformer
• creative genius behind Morrill Act

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Early Life

• born 1805
• Templeton, Mass
• classical education

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Early Life - cont.

• attended Yale
• brother Asa influenced father
• supported himself
• gardener
• woodcutter
• taught primary studies and athletics to young
  boys enrolled in gymnasium

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Teacher - Illinois College, 1833

• Rhetoric
• Latin
• Greek
• Minister - 2 Congregational Churches
• Anti-slavery
• tutored Abraham Lincoln

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Denounces Classical Education

• A classical teacher who has no original,
  spontaneous power of thought, and knows nothing
  but Latin and Greek, however perfectly, is enough
  to stullify a whole generation of boys and make
  them all pedantic fools like himself.

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Resigns Teaching

• studies horticulture
• develops Turner red raspberry
• Osage orange culture
• used to grow hedges/fences for the Illinois
  prarie farmers
• sections broad areas into cultivated fields

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Common Schools

• poor school
• free school
• it devolves on us to augment the facilities, the
  resources, and the completion of knowledge, until
  a royal road shall be paved from the threshold of
  every cabin in the land to the open doors and
  waiting honors of our most magnificent temples of
  science

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Industrial University Plan

• basis for the Land Grant Institution
• two classes of people
• industrial - had practically no institutions
• professional - had ample institutions

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Plan called for

• sufficient quantity of land for experiments
• buildings
• instruction by lecture during the colder months
• an industrial library
• professors to conduct a series of annual
  experiments

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Plan - cont.

• open to all classes
• medals and testimonies of merit given
• an experimental farm with all varieties of
  animals and useful plants
• commencement or annual fair held to share all
  knowledge with all classes of people
• financial support from the fund given to the
  state by the General Government

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Legislation

• Bill before Illinois legislature
• Sent to Congress in 1854
• Representative Yates - draw up bill
• not re-elected
• Turner sent all related papers to Justin Smith
  Morrill

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Legislation

• Turner knew both Lincoln and Douglas
• He got each to promise to sign the land grant
  bill if they were elected president

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Justin Smith Morrill

• Father of Land Grant Institution
• bill carries his name

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Early Life

• Born 1810, Stafford, Vermont
• Poor farm boy
• Father was blacksmith
• left school at 15

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Early Life - cont

• worked as store clerk
• Judge Harris (the store owner) - formidable power
  in his life
• started town library
• immersed in standard literature of day
• seeks fortune in Portland, Maine 2-3 years

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Returns Home

• Formed partnership with Judge Harris
• store was forum for political discussions
• foster interest in politics
• forms debating society
• 1848 - retires and devotes time to public life
  and politics
• 1851 - marries Ruth Barrel Swan - promoted
  interest in education

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Public Life

• 1854 - elected to Congress
• 1856 - re-elected to Congress

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Agricultural College Act - 1856

• establishing a Board of Agriculture... and also
  of establishing one or more national agricultural
  schools upon the basis of the naval and military
  schools, in order that one scholar from each
  Congressional District and two from each Sate at
  large, may receive a scientific and practical
  education at the public expense.

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Agricultural College Act

• 1857 - submitted bill to Congress
• returned unfavorably
• 1858 - resubmitted bill
• didnt pass House
• 1859 - resubmitted modified bill
• passed both Houses
• vetoed by Buchanan

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Agriculture College Act

• 1862 - resubmitted bill
• passed both Houses
• signed into law by Lincoln