be well-informed citizens, as well as good farmers. The school offered a three-part curriculum that balanced liberal arts, science and practical vocational studies. Williams also excluded Latin and Greek studies from the early curriculum. The College did require three hours of daily manual labor, which helped students defray expenses and develop the campus infrastructure while students learned scientific principles through their efforts. However, after just two years, Williams ran into conflict with the managing State Board of Education. Despite Williams' eloquent defense of an all-round education for the masses, the board saw the College as inefficient and had far deviated from the agriculture focus as the founder, John Clough Holmes, had anticipated. Indeed, some agriculturalists began protesting against the College's unpractical curriculum with some even calling for the College's abolition. In 1859, Williams resigned. The Board then reduced the curriculum to a two-year, vocation-oriented farming program, a move that resulted almost overnight in a drastic reduction in enrollment. The school was soon in dire financial straits and threatened with dissolution. After resigning from the College, Williams was elected to Michigan's legislature, and thereafter, elevated to lieutenant governor. He helped pass the Reorganization Act of 1861. That new law mandated that the College have a four-year curriculum and the power to grant master's degrees. Under the act, a newly created body known as the State Board of Agriculture took over from the State Board of Education in running the institution. At that time, the legislature adopted the name of State Agricultural College. The school's first class graduated in 1861. Financial Struggles and the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act to support similar colleges nationally, the first instance of federal funding for education. The federal funding had rescued the Agricultural College from extinction. In 1862 the newly created State Board of Agriculture appointed English Literature professor Theophilus Capen ("T.C.") Abbot president, much to the professor's surprise. Abbot remained president for twenty-two years and helped stabilize the College during and after the Civil War. During the presidency of Theophilus C. Abbot, a proposal was brought before the legislature by the University of Michigan to merge with the Agricultural College. Andrew Dickson White, who was president of newly-opened Cornell University, argued, "The State of Michigan... indeed gave its Agricultural College an excellent faculty and they have achieved much success considering their means but infinitely better