Auburn University was chartered by the Alabama Legislature as the East Alabama Male College on May 6, 1856, under the guidance of the Methodist Church. However, from its very first day, it has always been called "Auburn." The first
Presdient of the institution was Reverend William J. Sasnett, and the school opened its doors in 1859 to a student body of eighty and a faculty of ten. The early history of Auburn is inextricably linked with the
Civil War and the reconstructionist South. Some of the first
secession debates in Alabama occurred in Langdon Hall on the campus of the East Alabama Male College. Classes were held in "Old
Main" until the college was closed due to the Civil War, when most of the students and faculty left to enlist. The campus was
used as a training ground for the Confederate Army, and "Old Main" served as a hospital for Confederate wounded.To commemorate Auburn's contribution to the Civil War, a cannon lathe used for the manufacture of canons for the Confederate
Army and recovered from Selma, Alabama, was presented to Auburn in
1952 by brothers of the Alpha Phi
Omega fraternity. It sits today on the lawn next to Samford Hall.The school was reopened in 1866 following the end of the Civil War and has been open
ever since. In 1872, control of the institution was transferred from the Methodist Church
to the State of Alabama for financial reasons. Alabama placed the school under the
provisions of the Morrill Act as a land-grant institution, the first in the South to be established separate from the "state" university.
This act provided for 240,000 acres (971 km²) of Federal land to be sold in order to provide funds for an agricultural and
mechanical school. As a result, in 1872 the school was renamed to the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Alabama.Under the provisions of this act, land-grant institutions were also supposed to teach miltary tactics and train officers for
the United States military. In the late 1800s, most students at the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Alabama were enrolled
in the cadet program, learning military tactics and training to become future officers. Each county in the state was allowed to
nominate two cadets to attend the college free of charge.In 1892, two historic events occurred: women were first admitted to the Agricultural and
Mechanical College of Alabama, and football was first played as a school sport. Eventually, football replaced polo as the main
sport on campus. In 1899, the school name was again changed, this time to Alabama
Polytechnic Institute.On October 1, 1918, nearly all of
Alabama Polytechnic Institute's able-bodied male students 18 or older voluntarily joined the United States Army for short-lived military careers on campus. The student-soldiers numbered 878,
according to API President Charles Thach, and formed the academic section of the Student Army Training Corps. The vocational
section was composed of enlisted men sent to Auburn for training in radio and mechanics. The students received honorable
discharges two months later following the Armistice that ended World War I.
API struggled through the great depression, having scrapped an extensive expansion program by then-President Bradford Knapp.
Faculty salaries were cut drastically, and enrollment decreased along with state appropriations to the college.During World War II, API again found its place training officers for the
U.S. Military on campus; Auburn produced over 32,000 troops for the war effort. Following the end of World War II, API, like many
colleges around the country, experienced a period of massive growth caused by returning soldiers taking advantage of their
GI Bill offer of free education. In the five-year period following the end of the
war, enrollment at API more than doubled. This lead to a severe shortage of housing on campus; trailers housed many students
during this time, and would continue to be a major source of sudent housing into the 1980s.Recognizing that the school had moved beyond its agricultural and mechanical roots, it was granted university status by the
Alabama Legislature in 1960 and officially renamed Auburn University, a name that better
expressed the varied academic programs and expanded curriculum that the school had been offering for years. Like most
universities in the American South, Auburn was racially segregated prior to 1963, with only white students being admitted. Compared to the images of George Wallace standing in the door of the University of Alabama, integration went smoothly at Auburn, with the first African-American student
being admitted in 1964, and the first doctoral degree being granted to an African-American
in 1967.Today, Auburn has grown since its founding in 1856 to have the largest on-campus
enrollment in the state of Alabama, with over 23,000 students and a faculty of almost 1,200 at the main campus in Auburn. Additionally, there are over 6,000 students at the Auburn
University at Montgomery satellite campus established in 1967.