These same broad-minded pioneers had later persuaded her to give
twenty thousand acres of her land to the same cause and to exempt
officers and students of the institution from military service.
Still later, intent upon this great work, they had induced Virginia
to take from her own beloved William and Mary one-sixth of all
surveyors' fees in the district and contribute them. The early
Kentuckians, for their part, planned and sold out a lottery--to
help along the incorruptible work. For such an institution
Washington and Adams and Aaron Burr and Thomas Marshall and many
another opened their purses. For it thousands and thousands of
dollars were raised among friends scattered throughout the Atlantic
states, these responding to a petition addressed to all religious
sects, to all political parties. A library and philosophical
apparatus were wagoned over the Alleghanies. A committee was sent
to England to choose further equipments. When Kentucky came to have
a legislature of its own, it decreed that each of the counties in
the state should receive six thousand acres of land wherewith to
start a seminary; and that all these county seminaries were to
train students for this long-dreamed-of central institution. That
they might not be sent away--to the North or to Europe. When, at
the end of the Civil War, a fresh attempt (and the last) was made
to found in reality and in perpetuity a home institution to be as
good as the best in the republic, the people rallied as though they
had never known defeat. The idea resounded like a great trumpet
throughout the land. Individual, legislative, congressional aid--
all were poured out lavishly for that one devoted cause.

Sad chapter in the history of the Kentuckians! Perhaps the
saddest among the many sad ones.