The history of Cornell University begins when its two founders, Andrew Dickson White of Syracuse and Ezra Cornell of Ithaca, met in the New York State Senate in January 1864. Together, they established Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, in 1865. The university was initially funded by Ezra Cornell's $400,000 endowment and by New York's allotment of the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862
However, even before Ezra Cornell and Andrew White met in the New York Senate, each had separate plans and dreams that would draw them toward their collaboration in founding Cornell. White believed in the need for a great university for the nation that would take a radical new approach to education; and Cornell, who had great respect for education and philanthropy, desired to use his money "to do the greatest good." Abraham Lincoln's signing of Vermont Senator Justin Morrill's Land Grant Act into law was also critical to the formation of many universities, including Cornell, in the post–Civil War era.
Precursors
The first person to conceive of a single great university for the state of New York, a generation before Cornell, was the visionary, abolitionist, and philanthropist Gerrit Smith, from very much Upstate Peterboro. When the initial meeting of the very unpopular New York State Anti-Slavery Society was driven out of Utica (Oneida County) by the Mayor, it continued the next day in Smith's house.
A new college was to be established in upstate New York. This Central College, as it came to be called, was the abolitionists' college, taking over that role from the failed Oneida Institute (whose other descendent was Oberlin College). Like Oneida, it was part of the manual labor college movement, in which students were to work for some hours each day in addition to study, such work being spiritually and economically beneficial. In McGraw, it was west of Peterboro.
Central (1849–1860) was the first college in the United States that from its very first day was open to women, blacks, and Native Americans on an equal basis, something Oberlin was not. It was also the first to hire black faculty, and have them teaching a class with white students. That it allowed female students was just as unusual as allowing black students.
Central was financially unviable and victim of a lot of racial prejudice; some parents would not have their children study at "a nigger college", as it was called. When bankrupt, the entire college was taken over by Smith, who assumed its debts along with its meager assets.
Founders
As newly elected members of the state senate, Cornell chaired the Committee of Agriculture, and White was the chair of the Committee of Literature, which dealt with educational matters. Hence, both chaired committees with jurisdiction over bills allocating the land grant, which was to be used for instruction in "without excluding other scientific and classical studies and including military tactic, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts". Yet their eventual partnership seemed unlikely. Although both valued egalitarianism, science, and education, they had come from two very different backgrounds. Ezra Cornell, a self-made businessman and austere, pragmatic telegraph mogul, made his fortune on the Western Union Telegraph Company stock he received during the consolidation that led to its formation. Cornell, who had been poor for most of his life, suddenly found himself looking for ways that he could do the greatest good for with his money. He wrote, "My greatest care now is how to spend this large income to do the greatest good to those who are properly dependent on me, to the poor and to posterity." Cornell's self-education and hard work would lead him to the conclusion that the greatest end for his philanthropy was in the need of colleges for the teaching of practical pursuits such as agriculture, the applied sciences, veterinary medicine and engineering, and in finding opportunities for the poor to attain such an education.