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Page 13 text:
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' f J ifflF - The first buildings on campus. THE WAY IT WAS by John K. Bettersworth It all began when they tried to make a land-grant istitution out of Ole Miss. Back in the 1850 ' s, when lississippians were worried over their agricultural ' oes, a national movement for scientific agriculture ad caused Chancellor F. A. P. Barnard of the Univer- ty of Mississippi to express a hope that a school of griculture would be set up at Ole Miss, but the Civil ' ar intervened and Barnard hied himself off to run ' olumbia University. Nonetheless, in 1862, during that war. Congress assed the Morrill Act, which was the foundation of the ind-grant system. The act provided grants of public ind as a nest egg for the financing of land-grant col- !ges, whose mission was without excluding other sci- ritific and classical studies and including military tac- cs, ' to teach ' such branches of learning as are related ) agricultural and mechanical arts ... in order to pro- mote the liberal and practical education of the indus- ial classes in the several pursuits and professions of fe. Final action to accept the land-grant program in Mis- ssippi did not come until 1871, when Ole Miss was lade the white and Alcorn University for Negroes the A Heritage All Our Own The railroad that led to the center of campus. black land-grant institution. The land involved was 210,000 acres, supposedly worth $1.25 per acre. These lands the state sold for 90(t: an acre to a man in Cleve- land, Ohio. As for land-grant programs under the Morrill Act, the Alcorn program managed to survive, but Ole Miss had its problems. In 1871, the University of Mississippi set up a School of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts under a distinguished scientist, Eugene W. Hilgard. The only problem was students: five in 1873, three in 1874; and few if any of these were in agriculture. In 1876 the
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Page 14 text:
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heritage . . . whole effort, which was already being called the side show established at Oxford, collapsed; and that is where the future Mississippi State University would save the day. The next move, as might be expected, was to set up a separate land-grant college for whites. The prime mov- ers in this effort were the Grange, or Patrons of Hus- bandry, a potent national farm group. After failing to get a bill through the 1877 legislature, the Grange saw that certain legislators were not reelected. Accordingly, it won its point in the next year, and on February 28, 1878 the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Mis- sissippi was formally created. At the same time, Alcorn University became Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College. The board of trustees of the new college had to make two critical choices: first, it must determine the location of the college and second, it must select a president. Since North Mississippi ran the state in those days, the major question was where in North Mississippi the col- lege should be located. Ole Miss was on what is now the Illinois Central Railway; so it was a sure thing that Mississippi A. and M. would be in North Mississippi and on the other North-South main line, the Mobile and Ohio Railroad. The trustees had a glorious ride to visit possible sites, north and south, on both railroads. In December, 1878, they met to make the decision, which had more or less been narrowed down to a choice between Meridian and Starkville. Meridian suf- fered from the fact that it was a city, and city locations were then considered bad for institutions of learning. Legend has it that Starkville board member. Colonel W. P. Montgomery, quietly got an individual pledge from a number of the other members to cast a courtesy vote on the first round to go with his lone one in favor of Starkville; and Starkville won, of course, on the first ballot! Whether this story is true or not, Starkville did become the site of Mississippi A. and M. College. The college was located about a mile and a quarter from the then eastern town limits on land that was described as one of the poorest and most worn-out cotton plantations in the South. So the board ' s job was cut out for it. In 1879, the academic building, which was near the present site of Lee Hall, was under con- struction. Funds for a dormitory were not voted until February, 1880. Stephen D. Lee — the first President of MSU. Macon and Columbus. Lee, a South Carolinian by birth, was self made. As a young man he had wangled a promise of an appointment to West Point out of a suc- cessful candidate for Congress. In the Civil War he was a member of the military party sent to demand the sur- render of Fort Sumter. Toward the end of the war he was stationed in Mississippi, where even though the war was being lost, he won the hand of Miss Regina Harrison, of Macon and Columbus, together with a plantation in whose management he soon failed. To say the least, Lee knew from bitter experience that some- thing had to be done about Southern agriculture, and he meant to do just that. The opening of the new college was scheduled for October, 1880, but the dormitory would not be com- pleted until spring; so students had to find temporary lodging ($8 a month) in the community. Life was some- what primitive for the students in the early years. Dor- mitory rooms had coal fireplaces, for which each stu- dent brought in his own coal or, if an upperclassman, made the freshmen do that job. Bathing was done in an outside bathhouse. Also this was the age of the dry air closet, or outside privy. The college would have no inside plumbing and bath arrangements until the turn of the century. In April, 1880, the board got around to selecting the president, a Confederate Veteran, Stephen D. Lee, of As things got under way in 1880, the students quickly learned that General Lee was dead serious
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