What's a Land-Grant University?

Justin Morrill was a member of the United States House of Representatives from Vermont.

After several attempts by Morrill and others, he finally succeeded in convincing the United States Congress of the merits of his proposal to give grants of federal land to the states if they would use the income from selling the land to establish and support colleges teaching agriculture and engineering. The legislation was signed into law by President Lincoln on July 2, 1862, and is now commonly known as the Morrill Land-Grant Act. The Act has been amended several times, but the basic objective remains the same.  All the states and territories have now assigned at least one of their public institutions land-grant status.

Here are some important excerpts from the Act:
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress as assembled, that there be granted to the several States, for the purposes hereinafter mentioned, an amount of public land, to be apportioned to each State a quantity equal to thirty thousand acres for each Senator and Representative in Congress to which the States are respectively entitled by the apportionment under the census of eighteen hundred and sixty . . . .

Sec. 4.
. . . . That all moneys derived from the sale of lands aforesaid by the States to which lands are apportioned and from the sales of land scrip hereinbefore provided for shall be invested . . .  , and the interest . . . shall be inviolably appropriated, by each State which may take and claim the benefit of this Act, to the endowment, support, and maintenance of 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, in such manner as the legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life.