He is most widely remembered for Morrill Land-Grant Acts that provided federal funding for establishing many of the United States' public colleges and universities following a movement led by Jonathan Baldwin Turner.

[2] The success of his stores enabled Morrill to invest profitably in a farm, banks, railroads, and real estate.

[4] He then was a merchant in Strafford, and the partnership in which he participated with Judge Jedediah H. Harris grew to own and operate four stores throughout the state.

[10] He also served on the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, which drafted the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

[11] He served as chairman of the Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds (Forty-first through Forty-fourth Congresses) where he played a vital role in obtaining the current Library of Congress main building through his work on the Joint Select Committee on Additional Accommodations for the Library.

Passed after anti-tariff southerners had left Congress during the process of secession, Morrill designed it with the advice of Pennsylvania economist Henry C.

This act was signed into law by Abraham Lincoln in 1862, and established federal funding for higher education in every state of the country.

In his own words: This bill proposes to establish at least one college in every State upon a sure and perpetual foundation, accessible to all, but especially to the sons of toil, where all of needful science for the practical avocations of life shall be taught, where neither the higher graces of classical studies nor that military drill our country now so greatly appreciates will be entirely ignored, and where agriculture, the foundation of all present and future prosperity, may look for troops of earnest friends, studying its familiar and recondite economies, and at last elevating it to that higher level where it may fearlessly invoke comparison with the most advanced standards of the world.He also authored the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act of 1862, which targeted the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, based on the then-existing practice of plural marriage (polygamy).

On January 6, 1879, in Reynolds v. United States the Supreme Court, upheld the Anti-Bigamy Act's ban on plural marriage.

[16][17][18] While serving in the U.S. House, Morrill secured passage of legislation to establish the National Statuary Hall Collection inside the United States Capitol.

[19] Under the provisions of this 1864 law, each state is permitted to provide two statues of noteworthy citizens for display inside the Capitol.

[29] At the time of Morrill's death his 43 years and 299 days of continuous Congressional service was the longest in U.S. history.

Postal Service issued a 4 cent postage stamp to celebrate the centennial of the Morrill Land-Grant College Act.

In 1999, the Postal Service issued a 55 cent Great Americans series postage stamp of Morrill to honor his role in establishing the land grant colleges.