Then came the civil war; but Morrill and his associates did not despair of the republic.

In the midst of all the measures for putting vast armies into the field and for saving the Union from foreign interference as well as from domestic anarchy, they again passed the bill, and in 1862, in the darkest hour of the struggle for national existence, it became a law by the signature of President Lincoln.
And here it should not be unrecorded, that, while the vast majority of the supporters of the measure were laymen, most efficient service was rendered by a clergyman, the Rev.Dr.Amos Brown, born in New Hampshire, but at that time an instructor in a little village of New York.

His ideas were embodied in the bill, and his efforts did much for its passage.
Thus was established, in every State of the American Union, at least one institution in which scientific and technical studies were given equal rank with classical, and promoted by laboratories for research in physical and natural science.

Of these institutions there are now nearly fifty: all have proved valuable, and some of them, by the addition of splendid gifts from individuals and from the States in which they are situated, have been developed into great universities.
Nor was this all.

Many of the older universities and colleges thus received a powerful stimulus in the new direction.