Windy City Ag said:

---

Quote:

---

If you're talking about the Morrill Act, it was passed in 1862, so there were no Southern members of Congress there to vote on it.

---

Actually,

https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/Civil_War_VAFirstCivilWarSen.htm

Quote:

---

When Virginia seceded from the Union in April 1861, a pro-Union countermovement in the northwestern part of the state sought to keep Virginia loyal to the Union and to maintain representation within the federal government. Claiming that secession from the Union was not lawful, a restored "rump" government organized in Wheeling under the governorship of Francis Pierpont and claimed jurisdiction over the whole state. The rump Virginia general assembly elected two new United States senators to replace the two who had withdrawn in support of the Confederacy.

With the seating of Virginia senators Waitman T. Willey and John S. Carlile on July 13, 1861, the Senate affirmed the validity of the restored pro-Union government in Virginia. "The loyal men of Virginia have elected a legislature and seek representation in the Congress of the United States," argued Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois in a spirited debate over seating the two men. "They are entitled to representation here." In the Senate, Willey and Carlile advocated statehood efforts by the northwestern portion of Virginia, which led to the formation of the state of West Virginia in 1863.

---

Both Willey and Carlisle were yea votes for the act. Also,Kentucky was a Southern neutral state with citizens fighting for both sides, but the state kept Senate seats.

---

Windy City Ag said:

---

Quote:

---

My guess is that has less to do with the act (which provided generous support to create the university without requiring much from the state legislatures) and more to do with the fact that the Reconstruction government created A&M and did so at the expense of Austin.

---

Very much so . . . .I have read a lot about the 37th Congress. It was one of the most active in the history of the Republic and the 1st Morrill Land Grant Act was one of many new structures that were pushed onto to the reintegrated rebel states during reconstruction. If you look at the initial Congressional debate over the bill prior to the Civil War (first edition was vetoed by James Buchanan in 1857) , Southern and Western States resisted it as an unnecessary extension of Federal Sovereignty into what they viewed as a State matter.

The predictable response was to throw roadblocks in the way of actual support and implementation of the universities and instead favor more home grown institutions under the sway of regional folks.

---

Buck Turgidson said:

---

BTW, I read this book several years ago and really enjoyed it. Lots of info on the early days of the land grant schools.

https://www.amazon.com/Long-Gray-Lines-Tradition-1839-1915-ebook/dp/B00ZVEB68U

Long Gray Lines: The Southern Military School Tradition, 1839-1915

Military training was a prominent feature of higher education across the nineteenth-century South. Virginia Military Institute and the Citadel, as well as land-grant schools such as Texas A&M, Auburn, and Clemson, organized themselves on a military basis, requiring their male students to wear uniforms, join a corps of cadets, and subject themselves to constant military discipline. Several southern black colleges also adopted a military approach.


Challenging assumptions about a distinctive "southern military tradition," Rod Andrew demonstrates that southern military schools were less concerned with preparing young men for actual combat than with instilling in their students broader values of honor, patriotism, civic duty, and virtue. Southerners had a remarkable tendency to reconcile militarism with republicanism, Andrew says, and following the Civil War, the Lost Cause legend further strengthened the link in southerners' minds between military and civic virtue.

Though traditionally black colleges faced struggles that white schools did not, notes Andrew, they were motivated by the same conviction that powered white military schools--the belief that a good soldier was by definition a good citizen.

---

Buck Turgidson said:

---

Windy City Ag said:

---

Quote:

---

Texas was being a bunch of stubborn asses cutting off their noses by resisting the benefits of the Morrill Act.

---

---

---