1862 Morrill Act is topic of April 11 Olson Seminar

            "Reflections on the Morrill Act and the Man for Whom It's Named," is the title of the April Olson Seminar at the Center for Great Plains Studies.

            F. Edwin Harvey, director of the Justin Smith Morrill Scholars Program and professor of hydrologic sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, will discuss the Morrill Act at a Paul A. Olson Seminar in Great Plains Studies, at 3:30 p.m. April 11 in the Great Plains Art Museum, 1155 Q St.

            "On July 2, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed into law the Morrill Land-Grant College Act establishing what would become one of the most extensive and productive university education and research systems in the world," Harvey said. "But while it took Lincoln's pen to make it a law, it took Vermont Congressman Justin Smith Morrill's passion to make it a reality."

            Harvey will look back at the life of Justin Morrill -- businessman, gentleman farmer and statesman -- and discuss Morrill's role as author of the Land-Grant College Act. His talk will center around two questions:

• What inspired this new system of education that established in each state "at least one college where the leading object shall be, without excluding other scientific and classical studies, and including military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts"?
• At a time when the country was engaged in a great civil war, what would drive a store owner from Strafford, Vt., to want "to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life"?

            This is the fourth seminar in a series that was chosen to complement the March 28-30 symposium, "1862-2012: The Making of the Great Plains," sponsored by the Center for Great Plains Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in collaboration with Homestead National Monument of America, National Park Service.

            Sponsored by the Center for Great Plains Studies, the seminars are free and open to the public. For more information, contact the center at 402-472-3082 or visit www.unl.edu/plains.

Writer: Linda Ratcliffe, Center for Great Plains Studies, 402-472-3965