CORNELL UNIVERSITY — HISTORY. 2~ 



tirely new institution and locate it at Ithaca, to endow 

 the same with the sum of $500,000. A bill to establish 

 Cornell University, and to appropriate to it the income 

 from the sale of the public lands granted to the State by 

 the act of 1862, was therefore introduced into the next 

 session of the Senate by Mr. White. Mr. White, Mr. 

 Cornell, and Mr. Folger, late Secretary of the Treasury, 

 and then a State Senator, drew the bill with great care. 



The strife that followed was prolonged and bitter. 

 Every artifice of political trickery and wire-pulling pol- 

 iticians was brought to bear against its passage. The 

 smaller colleges cried for their share. Compromise was 

 proposed to Mr. Cornell, but he rejected the idea with 

 scorn. He would let the legislature put what it pleased 

 in the bill, and he would then accept or reject its pro- 

 visions, but he would not buy the silence of his oppo- 

 nents. As the result of this long struggle, the bill 

 was passed by the Senate, with an amendment providing 

 that the scrip should remain with the People's College, 

 in case it fulfilled the conditions of its grant within 

 three years ; and it came out of the Assembly with 

 an absurd amendment requiring Mr. Cornell to give 

 $25,000 to endow a chair of Agricultural Chemisty in 

 Genesee College, a small Methodist institution at Lima, 

 N. Y., before the representatives of the people would 

 permit him to give $500,000 to the people whom they 

 represented. The bill thus amended, became a law on 

 the 27th of April, 1865. 



The People's College again failed to comply with the 

 conditions for making the grant its own, and conse- 



