C a p s u l e H i s t o r y o f C a m p u s D e v e l o p m en t
A State University in Illinois

Two federal acts provided aid for higher education in the early years of the state: the College Fund and the Seminary Fund. The College Fund contained a percentage of funds from the sale of public lands in Illinois for building roads, and the Seminary Fund was derived from the sale of two townships. The state borrowed from these funds on an annual basis from 1829 until 1857 to cover general expenses. Despite the depletion of these funds, one futile attempt was made to establish a state university in Illinois between 1830 and 1850. Disputes over the location of the state capital, rivalries among sectarian colleges, the priority to fund primary and secondary education, and the general belief that a state university, like the sectarian colleges, would foster the growth of a class of aristocratic young men prevented serious consideration of a state-funded university.

In November 1851 at an agricultural convention in Granville, Illinois, a farmer and former professor of literature from Jacksonville, Illinois, Jonathan Baldwin Turner, outlined a plan to set aside public lands to support a system of industrial universities, particularly agricultural and mechanical colleges, in each state. This was the first of many speeches that Turner would give that advocated the need to pass on the advantages of science to the men engaged in industrial and agricultural pursuits. Until this time, the benefits of higher education were reserved for the professional man who generally studied literature, languages, or philosophy at a classical-sectarian college. Turner's novel idea roused diverse reactions from farmers, educators, politicians, journalists, and the general public: all took sides in a battle which alternately raged and subsided until July 2, 1862, when the College Land Grant Act was signed by the president from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln. Passed during the darkest period of the Civil War, the College Land Grant Act served as a declaration of confidence in the American union, already considered dissolved by many.

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