History of Michigan State University - Civil War and Post-war Period

Civil War and Post-war Period

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. 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. These included botany professor William J. Beal, an early plant 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.

Although the school's then-isolated location limited student housing and enrollment during the 19th century, the College had a strong reputation and produced many distinguished alumni. 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, 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 as Oberlin.

Notable 19th-century graduates include the aforementioned Bailey; Charles E. St. John, a prominent early 20th century astrophysicist who was an associate of Albert Einstein; Ray Stannard Baker, a famed turn of the 20th century "muckraker" journalist and Pulitzer Prize winning biographer of Woodrow Wilson; and William Chandler Bagley, a pioneering education reformer. In the 1870s, foreign students began traveling to the United States to attend the Michigan State Agricultural College such that, by the 1880s, they were a significant presence on campus. In 1887, two percent (six out of 312) of the College’s student population were Japanese. Among the 1880s students were Michitaro Tsuda, (B.S.1884), who went on to become a member of the Japanese emperor’s Privy Council, and Minakata Kumagusu, (1888), a prominent Japanese environmental scientist.

While the College had many successful alumni, many of Michigan farmers still feared that a college education would dissuade their children from agriculture. President Abbot helped win them over by taking the College to the farm. In 1876 the Agricultural College held the first "Farmers' Institutes" in rural communities across the state, where school professors shared experimental and practical information with Michigan farmers. This concept led to the Hatch Act of 1887, which provided federal funding for agricultural experiment stations operated by each state's Land Grant college. Through these "Farmers' Institutes" (now the MSU Extension), T.C. Abbot converted many skeptical farmers into ardent College supporters.