Peter Wallenstein, professor in the Department of History at Virginia Tech will present "Abraham Lincoln, the 1862 Morrill Act, and the Early History of Virginia Tech."

"Virginia Tech owes its origins to a congressman from Vermont who proposed the Land-Grant College Act; a president from Illinois who signed it while Virginia was warring against the Union whose Congress had just passed that law; and the vicissitudes of post-Civil War state politics when the Virginia Military Institute and the University of Virginia canceled each other out as they contended for the Commonwealth's land-grant money," Wallenstein said. This talk surveys the school's beginnings as Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College--and sketches how it grew into Virginia Tech.

This event is part of the Abraham Lincoln lecture series to support the exhibition "Abraham Lincoln, the Constitution and the Civil War" at Newman Library September 6-October 16.
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Location:	Torgersen Hall Room 3100
Price:	free
Sponsor:	University Libraries and the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences
Contact:	Tom Ewing etewing@vt.edu
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