106 POLITICAL LIFE-IV 



did not believe that the war for the Union could be brought 

 to a successful termination. 



With others I did my best against him; but while con 

 demning his political course as severely as was possible 

 to me, I never attacked his personal character or his mo 

 tives. The consequence was that, while politically we 

 were enemies, personally a sort of friendship remained, 

 and I recall few things with more pleasure than my jour- 

 neyings from Albany up the Mohawk Valley, sitting at 

 his side, he giving accounts to me of the regions through 

 which we passed, and the history connected with them, 

 regarding which he was wonderfully well informed. If 

 he hated New England as the breeding bed of radicalism, 

 he loved New York passionately. 



The first important duty imposed upon me as chair 

 man of the committee on education was when there came 

 up a bill for disposing of the proceeds of public lands 

 appropriated by the government of the United States 

 to institutions for scientific and technical education, under 

 what was then known as the Morrill Act of 1862. Of 

 these lands the share which had come to New York was 

 close upon a million acres a fair-sized European prin 

 cipality. Here, owing to circumstances which I shall de 

 tail in another chapter, I found myself in a contest with 

 Mr. Cornell. I favored holding the fund together, let 

 ting it remain with the so-called &quot; People s College, 7 to 

 which it had been already voted, and insisted that the 

 matter was one to be referred to the committee on edu 

 cation. Mr. Cornell, on the other hand, favored the divi 

 sion of the fund, and proposed a bill giving one half of 

 it to the &quot; State Agricultural College&quot; recently estab 

 lished at Ovid on Seneca Lake. The end was that the 

 matter was referred to a joint committee composed of 

 the committees on literature and agriculture, that is, to 

 Mr. Cornell s committee and my own, and as a result no 

 meeting to consider the bill was held during that session. 



Gradually I accumulated a reasonable knowledge of 

 the educational interests intrusted to us, but ere long 



