Justin Smith Morrill - Legislation

Legislation

Justin Smith Morrill is most widely known for sponsoring the Morrill Act, also known as the Land Grant College Act. This act was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln in 1862. This act established federal funding for higher education in every state of the country. In his own words:

"This bill proposes to establish at least one college in every State upon a sure and perpetual foundation, accessible to all, but especially to the sons of toil, where all of needful science for the practical avocations of life shall be taught, where neither the higher graces of classical studies nor that military drill our country now so greatly appreciates will be entirely ignored, and where agriculture, the foundation of all present and future prosperity, may look for troops of earnest friends, studying its familiar and recondite economies, and at last elevating it to that higher level where it may fearlessly invoke comparison with the most advanced standards of the world."

—1862, as quoted by William Belmont Parker, The Life and Public Services of Justin Smith Morrill

Many colleges established under this act have a 'Morrill Hall' named in honor of Justin Smith Morrill's contribution to higher education. In 1999, the U.S. Postal Service issued a 55¢ Great Americans series postage stamp of Morrill to honor his role in establishing the land grant colleges, the forerunners of many state universities.

He also authored the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act of 1862, which targeted The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, based on the then-existing practice of plural marriage (polygamy). On January 6, 1879, in Reynolds v. United States the Supreme Court, upheld the Anti-Bigamy Act's ban on plural marriage.

The Morrill Tariff of 1861 was a protective tariff law adopted on March 2, 1861. Morrill was its House sponsor; he designed it with the advice of Pennsylvania economist Henry C. Carey. It was one of the last acts signed into law by President James Buchanan, a Democrat from the pro-tariff state of Pennsylvania. The Morrill Tariff replaced the Tariff of 1857, which was considered favorable to free trade. Two additional tariffs sponsored by Rep. Morrill, each one higher, were passed during Lincoln's administration to raise urgently needed revenue during the Civil War.

The Morrill tariff was adopted against the backdrop of the secession movement, and provided an issue for secessionist agitation in some southern states. The law's critics compared it to the 1828 Tariff of Abominations that sparked the Nullification Crisis, although its overall rate was significantly lower.