page_title: History of Michigan State University
section_title: Civil War and post-war period
hierarchical_section_title: History of Michigan State University / Civil War and post-war period
caption_attribution_description: Photo self-taken and sepiatoned.
context_page_description: The history of Michigan State University dates back to 1855, when the Michigan Legislature established the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan in East Lansing, with 3 buildings, 5 faculty members and 63 male students. As the first agricultural college in the United States, the school served as a prototype for future land-grant institutions under the Morrill Act enacted during Abraham Lincoln's presidency. The school's first class graduated in 1861 right after the onset of the American Civil War. That same year, the Michigan Legislature approved a plan to allow the school to adopt a four-year curriculum and grant degrees.
  In 1870, the College became co-educational and expanded its curriculum beyond agriculture into a broad array of coursework commencing with home economics for women students. The school admitted its first African American student in 1899. Not long before this, in 1885, the College had begun offering degrees in engineering and other applied sciences to students. The 26th U.S. President, Theodore Roosevelt, addressed the school at the 1907 commencement, an event coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the school's opening.
context_section_description: In 1862 the newly created State Board of Agriculture appointed English Literature professor Theophilus Capen ("T.C.") Abbot president, much to the professor's surprise. Nevertheless, the soft-spoken Abbot remained president for twenty-two years and helped stabilize the College during and after the Civil War. One of the College's main concerns was that its Morrill Act endowment had attracted the University of Michigan's attention.  Advocates for the University brought a bill before the State Legislature to merge with the Agricultural College and move the Lansing faculty and facilities to the Ann Arbor campus. UM leaders argued that it was necessary to share the Morrill Act income with the financially struggling UM. At least one influential pro-merger advocate appeared persuaded more by pure academic considerations than financial self-interest.  Andrew Dickson White, Cornell University co-founder and first president, noted, “The State of Michigan . . . indeed gave its Agricultural College an excellent faculty and they have achieved much success considering their means but infinitely better would it have been to combine that Agricultural College with their noble University.”   While the plan initially had broad support across the state, merger opponents pointed out that Ann Arbor had inadequate facilities for an agricultural education; a move to Ann Arbor would require so much investment capital as to make the UM plan financially untenable. The Legislature voted down UM's proposal in 1863, but it returned to the floor in 1865, 1867, and again in 1869. While the College successfully fended off each takeover attempt, the persistent threat that it might move kept the Legislature from appropriating any money for new campus construction at Lansing. As a result, the College was restricted to one boarding hall and enrollment was accordingly limited for many years thereafter.
  When President T. C. Abbot could not expand the size of the College during the 1860s, he focused on the quality of education. Abbot worked hard to perpetuate Williams' vision of a "whole man" educational approach. He took the College back to its original mixed liberal/practical curriculum taught by learned scholars. By the 1880s these included botany professor William J. Beal, an early experimental botanist, pre-geneticist, who invented a hardier strain of hybrid corn through cross-fertilization. Beal corresponded with Charles Darwin and championed the laboratory, or "inductive", teaching method. He conducted his classes in the first botanical laboratory building on an American campus. Another distinguished faculty member was the alumnus-turned-professor, Liberty Hyde Bailey. Often called the "Father of American Horticulture", Bailey was the first person to raise the study of horticulture to a science equal to botany. Other noteworthy 19th Century faculty included Walter B. Barrows, who was a nationally-respected ornithologist whose treatise  Michigan Bird Life is widely considered the most comprehensive study of the subject, while Rolla C. Carpenter (B.S. 1873) was a building construction specialist as well as a pioneering HVAC engineer.
  Although the school's then-isolated location limited student housing and enrollment during the 19th century, the College became reputable largely due to alumni who went on to distinguished careers, many of whom led or taught in other land grant colleges. While the institution emphasized scientific agriculture, its graduates went into a wide variety of professions. In the 1878 report of the State Board of Agriculture, President Abbot wrote that "Our graduates show that a love of knowledge has been infused into them by frequently returning to study or by resorting to other institutions of learning to continue their studies. They have gone from us to the University [of Michigan], to Cornell, Yale, Harvard, England, France and Germany to continue their studies." Abbot also identified alumni who were teaching at land grant schools such as Cornell and the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and at reputable liberal arts colleges such 
caption: Old Botany Hall in 2005
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