Perhaps most visionary of all, the 37th Congress provided for the world’s foremost system of widely available college education. Lincoln believed “that the very best, firmest, and most enduring basis of our republic was education, the thorough and universal education of the American people.” In signing Justin Morrill’s bill to use federal lands to endow state colleges and universities in the education of the farming and working classes, Lincoln endorsed the transformation of American society and unleashed a mighty engine of economic development. Some of the finest universities in the world - among them Cornell, the University of California-Berkeley, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, to say nothing of dozens more- grew out of that bill, with the result that many millions of Americans and students from around the globe would never have to say, as Lincoln did: That is what I have always regretted - the want of college education. Those who have it should thank God for it.