consent of the board of trustees and empowered
the governor and council to appoint a Board of Overseers. In the
celebrated Dartmouth College case, 1819, the old board of trustees,
when defeated before the Supreme Court of New Hampshire in their suit
for the recovery of property which had been seized, carried the case
to the Supreme Court of the United States and engaged Daniel Webster
as their counsel. The Court declared the act of the New Hampshire
legislature in violation of the provision of the Constitution of the
United States which reads that "No state shall pass any ... law
impairing the obligation of contracts." The decision drew a sharp
distinction between public and private corporations, and a necessary
inference was that most of the existing institutions for higher
education were in the latter class. The result was to strengthen the
rising demand for publicly controlled institutions. The Southern and
Western states across the Alleghanies that were on the point of
framing state constitutions made provision for state universities
under state control.

The intention to provide higher education freely for the people had
already received its greatest impetus in an Act of Congress passed
shortly after the passage of the Ordinance of 1787, providing for the
organization of the Northwest Territory. By that act two entire
townships of public land were reserved to the states to be erected out
of the territory, the proceeds of the sale of which were to be devoted
to the establishment of a state university. These universities
followed swiftly upon the establishment of new states, and the
democratic ideal that prevailed is shown in the determination that the
state university was to be the crown of the public educational system
of the state. This is well illustrated in the provision of the
constitution of Indiana, adopted in the very year of the Dartmouth
College decision, 1819, which reads, "It shall be the duty of the
General Assembly, as soon as circumstances will permit, to provide by
law for a general system of education, ascending in regular gradation
from township schools to a state university, wherein tuition shall be
gratis and equally open to all." Circumstances did permit in the
following year, and the provisions of the bill materialized. The
national policy of granting public lands for educational purposes to
new states was continued, and one or two townships were devoted in
each case to the establishment of a