dominated academe in the bluegrass region ever since and was the sought-after destination for the children of the South's political leadership, military families, and business elite. It attracted many politically ambitious young men, including Stephen F. Austin, the founder of Texas.
=== After the Civil War ===
The new institution used Transylvania's campus in Lexington while keeping the name Kentucky University. The university was reorganized into several new colleges, including the Agricultural and Mechanical College (A&M) of Kentucky, publicly chartered as a department of Kentucky University as a land-grant institution under the Morrill Act. But due to questions about having a federally funded land-grant college controlled by a religious body, the A&M college was spun off in 1878 as an independent, state-run institution. The A&M of Kentucky soon developed into one of the state's flagship public universities, the University of Kentucky. Kentucky University's College of the Bible, which traced its roots to …
