Did your rival ever use the power of the state government to attack your school?

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The state legislature, which was controlled by University of Alabama alumni, pushed to sell the land scripts of 240,000 acres acquired from the Morrill Act or have any new land holdings held in conjunction with the university in Tuscaloosa. The debate lasted over four years, till Lee County and the City of Auburn won the location of the new university in 1872, after donating more than 100 acres and the remaining buildings and property of the East Alabama Male College.

During the 1870s the state legislature mismanaged Auburn's endowment putting the school on the edge of collapse. Collapse of the Agricultural and Mechanical College meant that the University of Alabama could assume the remaining land scripts, thus profiting from the closure of the new land-grant college.

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During the 1907 state legislature session, a debate surfaced to move the land-grant college from Auburn to Birmingham. Then later in that same session, the legislature approved the first appropriation to Auburn some 35 years after it first opened its doors, for a promised $800,000. The college only received a third of that appropriation, while the University of Alabama remained fully funded through the State Board of Education. The state legislature, still controlled by University of Alabama alumni, still appeared intent on letting Auburn "dry out"

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Attacks on (Auburn's) existence continued by the legislature. In 1915, appropriations to Auburn were withheld, which continued at times through the 1930s. During a 1945 legislative session, "The University of Alabama's report to the commission argued that the Tuscaloosa school had well-established and broad responsibilities for higher education in the state.

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