Freedom of Choice: how John Adams and Justin Morrill made the dream of choosing your life's work a reality.

The story of the colleges that teach agriculture in our country is virtually unknown among the common American. But it wasn’t always so. It was for the common American of the 1860’s that the states were offered the opportunity to establish them, and it was a major undertaking that was widely talked about and even debated over.

The story began with a common man, Justin Morrill a merchant’s clerk from Maine. Morill was a dynamic person who never got a formal education, but was an avid reader and seeker of knowledge. He became an expert in multiple subjects and was a hard worker. He had saved up enough money to retire to a farm in his home town of Vermont by the age of 38. He was recruited by the Whigg party to go to Washington as a congressman and promote his ideas on education for the common man. He wanted to provide opportunities for people like himself and his family that never had the chance to be formally educated. He saw the disparity between American farmers and those in Belgium who had better land management practices that made their land more fertile and productive. He also saw that most of the people of the country were the working farmers and they were the least likely to have those opportunities. During the civil war the politics favored the passage of his land grant college bill and Abraham Lincoln signed into law the Morill Act of 1862. It was a bold move combining the transfer of federal lands to the states in order to fund new or existing colleges in the pursuit of knowledge related to agriculture and mechanical engineering.  

This act opened up new opportunities that were never before available to the common laborer and put the pursuit of knowledge on the practical matters of farming and mechanics into the scientific relm, which has propelled our nation to prosperity.

This fulfilled founding father John Adams dream that those who came after him would have opportunities to have the freedom to engage in other studies that were not his leisure to explore. He knew his work was to establish the nation so posterity could have greater expectations:

“The Science of Government it is my Duty to study, more than all other  Sciences: the Art of Legislation and Administration and Negotiation, ought to take Place, indeed to exclude in a manner all other Arts. I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.” Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, post 12 May 1780

I believe his wish has been realized many times over and the nation has overflowed with such abundance on knowledge on so many subjects, we have outstripped any expectation of the founders. The freedom connection here is that knowledge makes us free. The knowledge of human nature, religion, political economy, classical literature, music, math, and the natural world that are especially effective at opening up the mind the fertility that Justin Morrill and the founders displayed. Just like the freedom that the slaves received by the end of the civil war, the common people had received a gift to change their station through learning and choose their career as John Adams foretold.