PART II—GENERAL INFORMATION
HISTORY AND GOVERNMENT

HISTORICAL SKETCH—In the settlement of the pioneer regions of the
United States, it very early became the established practice to set apart a
share of the unoccupied land for the support of an institution of higher
learning. Immigrants were thus assured that the opportunities of an ad-
vanced education would not be denied the children of the new community
because the founders of it had ventured into the wilderness. This system,
conceived in a spirit of statesmanship at once high and prudent, tended
to draw an intelligent body of citizens into the region which was being
settled, and to set at work forces which would be felt in the permanent
elevation of the tone of public education. Thus in 1836, the first year of
the territory of Wisconsin, steps toward the establishment of a university
were taken by the territorial legislature. In 1839, the National Congress
granted to the territory two townships of public land “for the use and
support of a university”; and in 1848, when Wisconsin was applying for
admission to statehood, provisions for the university were written into the
constitution laid before Congress.

The state was admitted May 29, 1848; the necessary legislative acts
providing for the organization of the University were approved July 26 of
the same year; and the first Board of Regents met at Madison in October.
The new state had nothing with which to endow the new institution but the
unsettled land already granted to it. The Regents, therefore, had before
them the choice of two courses—to sell the lands at low prices in competition
with the other wild lands of the state, or to refrain from selling until the
increase of population should have raised the value of the university prop-
erty to a substantial amount. The one course would sacrifice the material
endowment; the other would prevent the state from benefitting by the in-
fluence of the University in its formative years. The Regents wisely, as
the history of the state has proved, determined to open the institution with-
out delay. The financial operations which followed have been severely con-
demned, but there can be no question that the intelligent bounty of the state
legislature has afforded the University a safer and far more generous sup-
port than the largest possible endowment that could have been secured by
the conservative management of the land of the institution. Moreover, the
direct dependence of the University upon the legislature has made it a part
of the life of the state in an intimate way, and by making higher education
a practical matter for all citizens, has performed a useful service as an
element in raising political questions above a merely material plane.

The new institution began instruction in February 1849. It bore the
name of a university, but had in operation only a preparatory school of
twenty pupils, under the tuition of John W. Sterling, a graduate of Prince-
ton, who bore the title of professor of mathematics. Professor Sterling
gave a life of sacrificial devotion to the institution as it added to its
academy a little college, and as the little college carried on its struggling
and painful life. He was happy enough to live until the University began
to assume proportions worthy of its ambitious name. The chancellor, John
H. Lathrop, a graduate of Yale, called from the presidency of the Uni-

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