The University of Michigan | Page 5

of great significance in the future development of education in the State. It was one of the first plans in America for a complete educational program to be supported by the people of a state.[1] Its sources were to be found, undoubtedly, in the strong influence of French thought on contemporary American life, for this scheme was but a copy of the highly centralized organization of state instruction which Napoleon gave to France in the Imperial University of 1806-08. As Professor Hinsdale says, "the ponderous name belonged to organized public education." Four years later, another act established in Detroit "an University for the purpose of educating youth" as the successor of the Catholepistemiad, with little change in the broad and liberal outline of the plan save in two particulars,--a change from classical to English nomenclature and the substitution of a Board of Trustees for the self-governing President and Didactors of the earlier scheme.
[Footnote 1: No one of the old states had what we would now call a State University, although two or three states had institutions that bore that name, while several of the states had voted money or wild lands to promote higher education; nor had any of the new states, aided by the bounty of Congress, established such an institution that was worthy of the name, University.--Hinsdale, History of the University of Michigan, p. 16.]
Michigan at this time was on the far edge of civilization; it was not even organized as a territory until the year 1805. In 1800 the total population was only 3,757, while in 1817 it could not have been more than 7,000. The inhabitants of Detroit only numbered 1,442 in 1820. Aside from the Indians, who for many years were to be a not inconsiderable portion of the population, the early inhabitants were all French settlers whose main business was fur trading. With the first years of the nineteenth century, however, there came a constantly increasing stream of "Bostonians," as the men from the East were called. They were not welcomed at first, although their enterprise and education were to transform Michigan within a surprisingly short period into one of the most progressive of the new states. Nevertheless this growth was at first slow and it was not until Michigan became a state in 1837 that the rapid increase in settlers from New York and New England changed so completely the character of the people that it became in a few years a predominantly agricultural, instead of a primitive fur-trading community. The rapidity of this movement towards the West, once begun, was most fortunate, as the settlers from the older states in the East were enabled to put into effect immediately their own training in the schools of New York and New England for the benefit of their children. This is one of the underlying causes of Michigan's success; whereas other states, whose settlement began earlier, failed through the lowering of the standards of education inevitable in the hard life of the generation succeeding the first pioneers.
The initial public support of education in Michigan, as in all of the new states west of the Alleghenies, came from the important provision made by the Federal Government in 1785 for a system of surveys of the public lands. These had eventually been deeded to the Government by the different states as the only practicable settlement of conflicting claims which at one time promised to disrupt the new confederation. Their acquisition by the nation and their eventual division and admission to the Union as states contributed not a little to the strengthening of the central authority at a time when it was a vital necessity. The first survey of these lands provided, as is well known, for division into townships six miles square, to be again sub-divided into thirty-six lots one mile square called sections. The provision of this ordinance of particular interest in this connection is the following: "There shall be reserved the lot Number 16 of every township for the maintenance of public schools within the said township."
In the Ordinance of 1787, providing for the administration of the Northwest Territory, we have only the familiar general declaration that: "Schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged," but an ordinance adopted ten days later provided that in addition to the school lot in every township: "Not more than two complete townships are to be given perpetually for the purposes of a University, to be laid off by the purchaser or purchasers as near the center as may be, so that the same shall be of good land to be applied to the intended object by the Legislature of the State." This was the fundamental action which made possible the foundation of the University of Michigan almost at the same time that the State was