History of the University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin was originally conceived in 1827 under an article in the Constitución de Coahuila y Texas to open a public university in the state of Texas. The Constitution of 1876 also called for the creation of a "university of the first class." Thus, they created "The University of Texas." Since the school's opening in 1883, the University of Texas has expanded greatly with the Austin institution remaining the flagship university of the University of Texas System. By the late 1990s, the University had the largest enrollment in the country and contained many of the country's top programs in the areas of law, architecture, film, engineering, and business.
Upon Texas's independence, the Congress of the Republic of Texas adopted the Constitution of the Republic, which made its own provision to establish a system of public education in Texas. President Mirabeau B. Lamar's first speech to the Texas Congress iterated the need for education in a democracy; two weeks later, Ezekiel Cullen presented a report to the committee on education that contained a bill providing that twenty leagues of land be set aside for the support of a university. By the time Cullen's bill became a law on January 26, 1839, Congress had agreed to set aside fifty leagues of land. In addition, 40 acres (160,000 m2) in the new capital of Austin were reserved and designated "College Hill." Congress failed to act any further until 1858, when lawmakers set out in the Act of 1858 $100,000 in United States bonds left from the Compromise of 1850 to put towards the university. In addition, the legislature designated land reserved for the encouragement of railroad construction toward the universities' fifty leagues. However, Texas's secession from the Union and the outbreak of the American Civil War prevented Congress from carrying out these plans.
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