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THE STATE AGRICULTURAL AND MECHANICAL COLLEGE OF TEXAS, 1871-1879: THE PERSONALITIES, POLITICS' AND UNCERTAINTIES VOLUME I A Thesis by Marie Guy Tomlin son Submitted to the Graduate College of Texas ASM University in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS May 1976 Major Sub j cot: History Copyright by" Marie Guy Tomlinson 1976 THE STATE AGRICULTURAL AND MECHANICAL COLLEGE OF TEXAS, 1871-1879: THE PERSONALITIES, POLITICS, AND UNCERTAINTIES A Thesis by Marie Guy Tomlinson Approved as to style and content by: )1 p] (ChairmanJ o f Committee ) (Member) (Acting Head of Department) (M er May 1976 111 ABSTRACT The State Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, 1871-1879: The Personalities, Politics, and Uncertainties. (May 1976) Marie Guy Tomlinson, B. S. , Southwest Texas State University Chairman of Advisory Committee: Dr. Joseph M. Nance The State Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas was created as a joint venture by national and state governments in 1871 in the period known as Reconstruction. Many of the problems that the College encountered can be traced to the fact that it was not created as a result of public demand in Texas. The first College commissioners squandered the state appropriation to build the College and thereby gave it a poor reputation from the beginning. It was a pioneering effort in state —supported higher education in Texas, and though it met with some successes during the first eight years, it encountered even greater problems than public apathy, owing to its location, the animosity of religious colleges, inadequately prepared students, a lack of equipment and trained teachers in the sciences, as well as a lack of adequate financing. The Endowment Fund was the only financial support the College had from 1876 until 1879, and it was primarily used to pay faculty salaries. The administration was forced to use the contingent fund, accumulated from the payment of minimal student fees, to make any improvements or repairs to the College properties and equipment. Consequently, no advance- ment could be made in agricultural and mechanical education since the College had no facilities or equipment to teach either; yet, certain groups made increasing and impossible demands that this be done. The A. and M. College had friends as well as enemies. Since there were only sufficient funds to provide literary studies, which was what the students demanded and the parents desired they be taught, the Board of Directors and faculty attempted to establish a good reputation for the A. and M. College and to maintain the standards of a true col- lege. Many influential people suggested that it become the State University and that the state concentrate all its efforts toward developing the College. The success of the College and the recurring proposals that the College become the University, led to open antagonism on the part of the more numerous and influential supporters of the long talked of but non —established and non-functioning University of Texas. They saw the increasing popularity of the College as a threat to that institution ever becoming activated. The possibility existed that the available University Fund would be appropriated to the use and promotion of the State Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, thereby delaying the establishment of the University by another forty years, if ever. Pressures from without led to dissension within the College. Repeated friction led to a Board investigation and the dismissal of the faculty and President in December, 1879. During the next year, after a drastic drop in student numbers, the College was reorganized with less emphasis on literary education, but it was to be many years before the College was adequately equipped to provide quality agricultural and mechanical education as envisioned by the Morrill Act and the early promoters of its estab- lishment. vr TABLE OF CONTENTS VOLUME I CHAPTERS Page Introduction: Post Civil-War Conditions in Texas and the Morrill Act, 1862 The Beginning of the Agricultural and Mechanical College 34 III. 1871-1873: A Costly Fiasco 78 IV. The Transition: From Radical to Democratic Control 119 1874-1876: A New Beginning 136 VI. Organization of the State Agricultural and Mechanical College 170 VII. The Opening: Faculty, Rules, Requirements, and Procedures 202 VIII. 1876-1877: The First Year of the College 257 IX. The Second Year: Popularity and Criticism 304 VOLUME II X. The Third Session: A Time of Uncertainty 372 XI. A New Direction: A Time of Crisis 423 XII. The Disastrous Imbroglio 472 XIII. The Investigation 524 XIV. The Years that Followed: An Explanation of the November Drama 579 XV. Conclusions 644 BI BL IO GRAPHY 652 VITA 667 PREFACE The State Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, as a creature of its own times, was bound up in a web of economic circumstances, state politics, and the personalities of that day that have been too frequently ignored by those who live a century later. However, the College can not be separated from these influences, nor from the public atti- tudes that played a vital part in its development. The web of history is endless, and the discovery of one fact or document leads to the search for another that sheds light on the decisions made, or the fatal indecision in some instances. The fickleness of public opinion and of state politics were factors with which the College was forced to reckon. Most importantly, as one of the first students who attended the A. and M. College stated, the College's history was never encased in bricks and mortar but in the lives of those it influenced as well as in the lives of those who influenced it. There is always the tantalizing prospect that some undiscovered document will help unravel the web of events. Fortunately, the papers of Louis L. McInnis were saved and are in the Texas A&M University Archives, to provide an invaluable source of information over a space of more than thirty years, and constitute evidence of his deep and abiding interest in the College. Likewise, the papers of the governors of Texas provide an invaluable source of information, and the missing letters and documents lead us to interesting conjectures. The papers of A. J. Rose shed much light on a later period of the College's history, be- ginning in 1887, when he began his service on the Board of Directors; however, his papers concerning the activities of the Texas State Grange throw light on the early history of the College. It is an interesting irony that as a reader peruses Rose's papers, many of them detailing the bitter struggle which occurred between the University of Texas and the A. and M. College in the 1880's, and in which Rose took part, he looks out the windows of the University of Texas Archives over the "forty acres. " In making a study of the past, a researcher must often- times neglect those living in the present, as has been the case with my family, and gratitude is expressed for their long-suffering patience. My especial thanks are expressed to Dr. J. M, Nance, who has made suggestions to, advised, and encouraged the researcher. Appreciation is expressed to Mr. Ernest M. Langford, whose love for and interest in the Texas AEM University has endured for more than half a century, and for his ability to breathe life into an cra that is past. The author's conversations with him have made this study a personal experience as well as a scholarly one. Gratitude is also expressed to my typist, Melinda Karnok, for all the assistance that she has given. CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: POST-CIVIL WAR CONDITIONS IN TEXAS AND THE MORRILL ACT@ 18 62 Time was running out when the Twelfth Legislature of Texas acted to accept the federal land grant given under the terms of the Morrill Act of 1862, amended in 1866, in order to allow an additional five years for those states undergoing reconstruction to meet the provisions of the law. Owing to the turmoil of Reconstruction, by the time Texas decided to act, its authorities had only three months to put the College into operation, an unrealistically impos- sible task. Haste and ill-considered planning led to mistakes that were to plague the College for many years. As the first Texas state-supported college, the State Agri- cultural and Mechanical College actually became the step-child of the state which had looked to the establish- ment of a great state university ever since the early days of the Republic of Texas and had set aside both a site and a land donation for its creation and support. The College was also to be a child of federally-supported education, an idea that met with Southern antipathy, administered by a Radical Republican state government, which had created a This thesis will follow the format and style of the So tlw t H' t ' 1 ~Qt. 1 system of public education, also equally repugnant to most Texans. Under such unfavorable parentage, the College was initiated in a time of great social, political, and economic upheaval. As the first public institution of higher education in Texas, every facet of the College was bound to come under close public scrutiny and criticism; mistakes that could be avoided by later state-supported educational institutions were made in establishing this first state college. As an agricultural and mechanical college it would slowly progress through a system of trial and error under unfavorable cir- cumstances, receive the continual criticism that accompanied such a drastic innovation in education, and eventually, along with its sister land grant colleges, create a new body of knowledge in the sciences that gave an entirely new direction to education and improvement in the quality of American life.

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