Artist: Billy Morrow Jackson

Three historic individuals dominate the scene. Illinois native Jonathan Baldwin Turner, to the left, spoke up for the idea that working people had to increase their knowledge if they wanted to rise above their “present terrible conditions.” His belief that agricultural reform could come through public education provided the basis for the Land-Grant Act. Abraham Lincoln, in the center, holds the bill he signed into law. Justin Smith Morrill, the congressman from Vermont who sponsored the legislation, stands to the right. He worked out details, obligating new institutions to provide instruction in the mechanic arts, in agriculture, and-reflecting the Civil War still being fought-in military training, “without excluding other scientific and classical studies.”