The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 1, July 1897 - April, 1898 Page: 236
334 p. : ill., ports., maps ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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236 Texas Historical Association Quarterly.
one million acres of land given by the Constitution of 1875 selected
and surveyed for the University in the counties of Tom Green,
Pecos, and Crockett.
After my nomination for the office of Governor of Texas in
1878, I devoted my especial attention to the operations of the gov-
ernment, including the subject of education, and became impressed
with the importance of the further improvement of the com-
mon free schools, which had commenced during Gov. Coke's ad-
ministration after the adoption of the Constitution of 1875, and
also of the propriety of making an effort to establish a University
in this State, to furnish Texas youths of both sexes the opportun-
ity of a higher education within the State instead of their being
drummed up, as had long been the case, by agents for high
schools in other States. Learning that there was a convention of
teachers in session at Waco, I addressed a letter to Dr. Rufus C.
Burleson, requesting that a committee of eminent teachers should
be appointed to visit Austin during the session of the legislature
in 1879, to aid the government by their advice and influence in
educational affairs. I was afterwards informed that such a com-
mittee had been appointed.
In my inaugural address on the 21st of January, 1879, to show
the necessity of a more liberal and expeditious mode of disposing
of the public lands than that which then prevailed, I said: "For
under the present mode of disposing of these lands the scholastic
population will increase faster than the fund. * * * And the same
policy will postpone indefinitely the building of a University, which
should be erected at the capital of the State, for the education of
Texas youths, instead of sending them out of the State to be edu-
cated, and to return home strangers to Texas."
On the 5th of February, 1879, I delivered a message unon the
University, in which was exhibited the amounts of the bonds, cash,
and land sale notes belonging to its fund ($445,470.18), and said:
"If steps should be taken now to have the one million acres of pub-
lic land set apart, and all of the lands sold, as I have recommended,
we may expect in a few years to have a university in Texas. This
is equally as important as to have common schools; for while the
one elevates the masses to a certain degree in the scale of civili-
zation, the other is a necessity in this age to properly direct it in
the progress to power and prosperity."
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Texas State Historical Association. The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 1, July 1897 - April, 1898, periodical, 1897/1898; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101009/m1/262/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.