The Struggle toward Equality in Higher Education:The Impact of the Morrill Acts on Race Relations in Virginia, 1872-1958
iv Chapter 1: Background on the Passage of the Morrill Act and its Effect on Virginia 1 Chapter 2: Virginia Tech’s Establishment in Accordance with the 1862 Morrill Act 31 Chapter 3: The Establishment and Operation of Virginia State University 47 Chapter 4: Education, Agriculture, and Race Relations in Virginia 78 Chapter 5: Federal and State Responsibility for the Effects of Segregation in Virginia’s public higher education system 92
The Education of Engineers in America before the Morrill Act of 1862
The traditional view of antebellum colleges, as exemplified by the works of Richard Hofstadter and others, depicts them as dogmatic, elitist, inflexible, and hostile both to science and to more practically oriented subjects, such as engineering. Only in recent decades have scholars disputed this view. Stanley Guralnick in 1975 challenged the contention that antebellum colleges were antagonistic to science, demonstrating that they made extraordinary and successful efforts to modify their curricula and add faculty to increase science offerings. Shortly after, in 1982, Colin Burke published a broadly based, quantitative study of antebellum colleges which revealed that they were far more successful, accessible, adaptable, and progressive than previously recognized.
New Data on Early Engineering Education
Until a century ago engineers prepared for their work, as they had done for the fifty preceding centuries, by observation, practice and ap prenticeship. The professional training of James Geddes, Charles Brod head and Benjamin Wright who built the Erie Canal must have been very similar to that of the builders of the pyramids and of the Roman roads and aqueducts. But a change was now imminent. Classes and schools for engineers were about to begin; had begun in France in 1747 with the Ecole des Ponts et Chauss?es and in Germany in 1765 with the K?nigliche S?chsiche Bergakademie. Military engineering was also taught in schools both in Europe and America. Some passages which look toward education in military engineering are to be found in Wash ington's correspondence. Dr. John Anderson of the University of Glas gow offered the new republic his services as "Engineer Artillerist and Director of the Gun Foundry of the United States of America. ' ' This was the John Anderson (1726-1796) who founded a famous Glasgow in stitution for teaching applied science. He proposed now to teach Ameri can cadets either at Glasgow or in the United States, as it might be ar ranged. Washington was keenly interested but doubtful about ways and means. Tobias Lear, his secretary, visited Glasgow and made an enthusi astic report on Anderson's achievements and his standing in his com munity. "If we should carry into effect the intention of establishing a national University in Washington City," wrote Lear, "Mr. Anderson would be a great acquisition to it, provided he could be drawn over there. 'n Nothing came of these efforts. But West Point got itself estab lished ; and this furnished a certain stimulus to civil engineering. Many of its graduates resigned their army commissions, almost as soon as they had earned them, to enter civil occupations, sometimes as engineers and * sometimes, as we shall see, to teach engineering. Civil engineering was taught at Rensselaer, in a course regularly or ganized for that purpose, first in 1835 although a few men who became engineers had secured their basic training there before that date. That the course was comprehensive rather than technical and specific is suffi