At the State University of Michigan, which had even
then taken a foremost place in the higher education west of the
Great Lakes, there was very meagre instruction in chemistry and
virtually none in physics. This being the state of things in the
middle of the century in institutions remarkably free from
clerical control, it can be imagined what was the position of
scientific instruction in smaller colleges and universities
where theological considerations were entirely dominant.
But in 1851, with the International Exhibition at London, began
in Great Britain and America a movement in favour of scientific
education; men of wealth and public spirit began making
contributions to them, and thus came the growth of a new system
of instruction in which Chemistry and Physics took just rank.
By far the most marked feature in this movement was seen in
America, when, in 1857, Justin S. Morrill, a young member of
Congress from Vermont, presented the project of a law endowing
from the public lands a broad national system of colleges in
which scientific and technical studies should be placed on an
equality with studies in classical literature, one such college
to be established in every State of the Union.
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