Signed by Abraham Lincoln on July 2, 1862, the Morrill Act granted each state 30,000 acres of federal land per member of Congress; proceeds from selling the land had to endow at least one college dedicated to agriculture, mechanical arts, military tactics, and classical studies. The Act created the modern American public research university — from Cornell and MIT to the great state flagship systems — and made higher education broadly accessible to working- and middle-class Americans for the first time. A second Morrill Act in 1890 required states to admit Black students or fund separate land-grant institutions, which produced the historically Black land-grant colleges.