THE KENTUCKY ALUMNUS II
Transylvania University had ceased to be either a college or a university.
It had an endowment of $60,000, ample and beautiful grounds, a iine old build-
ing, a good library and a fairly good chemical laboratory, While looking toward
Lexington for a future site for Kentucky University, another factor was begin-
ning to come into the field of view and to attract attention.
An act of Congress, known as the Morrill Act, approved ]uly 2, 1862, gave
to each state in the Union thirty (30,000) thousand acres of public lands for
each Senator and Representative in Congress "for the endowment, support and
maintenance of at least one college where the leading object shall be, without
excluding other scientific and classical studies and including military tactics, to
teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic
arts in such manner as the legislatures of the states may respectively prescribe
in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes
in the several pursuits and professions of life."
i The act makes instruction in those branches of learning related to agricul-
ture and the mechanic arts obligatory. It also makes instruction in military
tactics obligatory. _It makes the inclusion of other scientific and classical
studies permissive, optional, with the states. The states may, out of this Morrill
fund, establish and maintain an Agricultural and Mechanical College only, or
they may make the Agricultural and Mechanical College the nucleus of a Uni-
versity organization which shall include agriculture and mechanics as one of its
colleges. Eleven or twelve of tl1e states maintain out of this fund Agricultural
and Mechanical Colleges only. The majority of the states have built and main-
tain universities on the basis of the land grant act of 1862, some of which are
among the best universities in America. These institutions have in their facul-
ties many men of distinction, men of ablity and scholarship.
When the Morrill Act passed Congress, the country was in the midst of the
great Civil War. Educational matters occupied their attention but little. In
1864, the Trustees of Transylvania, in which the state had a controlling in-
terest, offered to the Legislature of Kentucky the endowment, grounds and build-
ings of Transylvania University as a site for the Agricultural and Mechanical
College of Kentucky, thus combining the old State interest in Transylvania with
the new institution which was to come into being and placing all the State in-
terests in higher education under one management. A bill for the consolidation
of Transylvania with the Agricultural and Mechanical College passed one House
of the General Assembly, but was not acted upon in the other.
After an existence of sixty-one years of success, followed by decline and
ultimately by collapse, Transylvania with all its valuable assets was only a name,
ready to be incorporated or absorbed in any institution which could infuse life
and vigor into its inert mass. Its Trustees were ready to turn over its trusts
i to any eligible successor.
At this juncture, Kentucky University was ready to rise again like the
  Phoenix from its ashes and to take on new life either at Harrodsburg or else-
{ where and at this point the future Agricultural and Mechanical College was
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