Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture

Interim Director: Voices from the past: Benjamin F. Gue

Back to Leopold Letter Spring 2012

By MARK HONEYMAN, Interim director

Here’s something remarkable: Anniversaries of events separated by more than 100 years coincide in 2012. The Leopold Center, created by the 1987 Iowa Groundwater Protection Act, is 25 years old this year.  And 150 years ago in 1862, the Morrill Act provided federal land to states to fund colleges for studying agriculture and industry.

Enacted by Congress and signed by President Lincoln, the Morrill Act created colleges for the working class, now known as the network of land-grant universities including Iowa State University. The act has been heralded as a milestone in the “democratization of education” in the United States.

Iowa was the first state to accept the federal grant of land to fund what was then Iowa State Agricultural College and Model Farm. Many people contributed to this new institution, but one little-known figure stands out as Iowa State’s founding father. The story of Benjamin F. Gue and the beginnings of Iowa State are intertwined and speak of his vision, perseverance and leadership.

Gue was born in 1828 to a family of Quaker abolitionists. His father died when he was 10 years old, forcing him “to give up all thought of higher education for life on the farm.” He came to Iowa from New York in 1852 as a young man of 24, becoming a farmer, journalist, legislator and historian. He was active in the anti-slavery, temperance, public education and women’s rights movements as well as the new Republican Party.

Gue was self-conscious about his lack of a formal education. He writes of these feelings of inadequacy when he and other farmer-legislators addressed “the educated professional gentlemen, lawyers skilled in long practice in public speaking with all the advantages of a college education.”

In 1858, during his first term in the Iowa legislature, Gue and cohorts wrote the bill to create the Iowa State Agricultural College and Model Farm. Gue claimed that lack of educational possibilities caused the “country boys” to leave farming, creating a shortage of leaders in rural areas. He insisted on an educational option for the “farmer, mechanic, day laborer, inventor and manufacturer.”  He appealed to class equality and asked for a roll-call vote that would show the split “between the supporters of higher education for the privileged few and advocates of education opportunity for all.”

When the new college’s officials asked for more funds, the opposing faction felt that the young state could not afford this “ill-advised” investment. They moved to repeal the law and close the college. Gue used a motion to table that blocked the action and saved the new college.

In 1862, during a special session to consider war-related matters, Gue again led the way. The Iowa General Assembly accepted the terms of the newly enacted Morrill Act to receive 240,000 acres in support of a college for agricultural and industrial education. Realizing the abundant prospects of the major land grant, supporters of the University of Iowa moved to split the land between the two schools. Gue successfully argued that the two schools had separate missions and the land grant stayed with Iowa State College. In 1867, Gue was part of a two-man team that visited 16 colleges in 12 states to study their organizations and informally search for the college’s new president and faculty.

Gue went on to chair Iowa State’s Board of Trustees, recruited the first president, Adonijah Welch, and spoke at the opening of the College on March 17, 1869. For 11 years he had led efforts to create a “people’s college.” Gue predicted that “We may not live to see the day, but the time will surely come in which the graduates of the Iowa Agricultural College will be found among the most eminent men and women that our State or the country will produce.”  He emphasized that the college was open to “all of God’s people” including both genders and that it was especially dedicated to the “education of the working people of Iowa.”

Few of the 1,200 gathered at the 1869 opening ceremony would envision the future scope of Iowa State University, including the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. Iowa State University and the Leopold Center are the products of visionary legislators of two very different eras. We are all indebted to them.

Note: B. F. Gue quotes from “The Land Grant Act and the People’s College, Iowa State University,” A.H. Sheridan (ed), 2012; "History of Iowa State College,” E.D. Ross, 1942; and “The Land-Grant Idea at Iowa State College,” E.D. Ross, 1958.

Historical note: Among the legislators who contributed to the Iowa Groundwater Protection Act were David Osterberg, Sue Mullins, Don Paulin, Ralph Rosenberg, Paul Johnson, Jack Hatch and Don Shoultz. Reference: “Iowa Groundwater Protection Act” [PDF], Proceedings of the Leopold Center 1997 Tenth Anniversary Conference, July 30-31, 1987, Ames, Iowa.

Back to Leopold Letter Spring 2012