It would combine the advantages of Zurich, Freiburg, Creuzot and the Sheffield Scientific.

Providence had apparently reserved and set apart the Knobs of East Tennessee for this purpose.

What else were they for?
Was it not wonderful that for more than thirty years, over a generation, the choicest portion of them had remained in one family, untouched, as if, separated for some great use! It might be asked why the government should buy this land, when it had millions of yes, more than the railroad companies desired, which, it might devote to this purpose?
He answered, that the government had no such tract of land as this.

It had nothing comparable to it for the purposes of the University: This was to be a school of mining, of engineering, of the working of metals, of chemistry, zoology, botany, manufactures, agriculture, in short of all the complicated industries that make a state great.

There was no place for the location of such a school like the Knobs of East Tennessee.