'The Days of a Man 



D868 



Ezra 



Tappan, who, more than any one else, fixed the 

 purposes of our state university system. In 1864, 

 during another visit to Europe, he did loyal serv- 

 ice in behalf of the Union cause, especially in 

 England. 



News of his nomination as state senator for his 

 native town of Syracuse, New York, now recalled 

 him to America. During his subsequent service in 

 the state senate of which he was the youngest 

 member he came into close association with 

 Ezra Cornell the oldest whom he gradually 

 Cornell brought into sympathy with his own educational 

 ideals. These relations, which ripened into a warm 

 friendship, led to results of the highest importance. 

 After a long and bitter fight against adverse interests 

 represented in the legislature, the details of which I 

 need not discuss, the state accepted Mr. Cornell's 

 gift of a commanding college site at Ithaca on 

 Cayuga Lake, supplemented by the sum of $500,000 

 as the nucleus of endowment for the proposed uni- 

 versity initiated as a result of the Morrill Act of 

 1862. This federal statute, the work of Senator 

 Justin Morrill of Vermont, provided for the founding 

 in each state of an institution which should give 

 instruction in Agriculture and Mechanic Arts in 

 addition to the usual courses in the Liberal Arts and 

 Sciences. To that end each state was awarded its 

 quota of "scrip." l In nearly every case, unfortu- 

 nately, scrip was sold cheaply, "on a glutted market," 

 without effort to locate land. But Cornell Uni- 

 versity, despite a pressing need of funds in its 



1 Official warrant for the possession of unoccupied or unsold government 

 land, at that time mainly confined to the region west of Lake Michigan. Under 

 the Morrill Act, scrip was distributed on a basis of representation in Congress 

 that is, according to the relative population of the various states. 



C 78 3 



The 



Morrill 



Act 



