Later Political Career
Rollins did not run for Congress in 1864, but returned to Columbia. In that year's presidential election, he endorsed the Democratic Party candidate, George B. McClellan. This signaled his preference for the party’s conservative stance on slavery and African-American equality, and recognized its shift from secessionism. In 1866, he was elected as a Democrat to the Missouri House of Representatives, and in 1868 to the State Senate. There, Rollins supported President Johnson's mild Reconstruction policies, but did not strongly denounce Radical Republican efforts to develop more stringent policies, so as not to harm funding prospects for the University of Missouri.
Rollins’ support of business aligned with Republican policies, but his opposition to racial equality kept him from joining that party until after Reconstruction and Republicans stopped pushing for this. Now out of office, he broke with the Democrats in 1878 over their support of paper currency. He became a Republican, and remained one for the rest of his life.
While a legislator, Rollins focused on the University of Missouri. The state was not funding the school. The Civil War left the University in poor physical shape and with few students. The local fundraising in the original competition set a precedent for the State Legislature to ignore later requests for money. As a result, the campus was small, the students came mainly from Boone County, and the place seemed more like a county school than a state university.
As a legislator after the war, Rollins wrote, introduced, and helped pass several measures, which together financially stabilized the University of Missouri for the first time, and strengthened Columbia's hold on it:
- Appropriation of $10,000 for a new President's House, and $16,000 per year for general funding (1867).
- Establishment of Normal Department to train school teachers (1867).
- Establishment of Agricultural and Mechanical College. Concessions to get the bill passed required Boone County to contribute money for the new college, and located the new Missouri School of Mines in Rolla, not in Columbia (1870).
- Investment of $122,000 from state sales of "seminary lands" for higher education, as authorized by the Federal Government (1870). This money was augmented with a similar act in 1883.
- Issue of $166,000 in bonds to build the new School of Mines at Rolla (called Missouri University of Science and Technology as of 2008), liquidate University debt, complete the Science Building (called Switzler Hall as of 2008), and add to the University's permanent endowment (1872).
- Setting maximum University tuition at 10 dollars, making college easily affordable for most students (1872).
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