In 1822 East Tennessee College, Cumberland College (recipient of the Middle Tennessee share of lands under the Compact of 1806) and the University of North Carolina participated in an agreement between the Tennessee legislature and the University of North Carolina. The Compact of 1806 had guaranteed the rights of veterans of North Carolina’s Revolutionary army or their heirs to the lands in Tennessee to which they were entitled under North Carolina’s laws providing bounties to soldiers. North Carolina assigned to its state university all military warrants belonging to soldiers who died intestate. Tennessee questioned the validity of the warrants, and the University of North Carolina agreed to a settlement under which Tennessee agreed to validate the warrants and to exempt the lands from taxation until 1850. In exchange, the University of North Carolina transferred land warrants for forty thousand acres to Cumberland College and for twenty thousand acres to East Tennessee College, the unequal distribution said to be because of the relative populations of the two sections of the state and their representation in Congress.
In 1825 a different arrangement was made for some warrants subsequently acquired by the University of North Carolina, under which the lands were sold directly by the State of Tennessee, with the proceeds divided among the three colleges (Cumberland College, East Tennessee College, and the University of North Carolina), the Tennessee academies, and the common school fund. East Tennessee College received approximately $5,000 from Tennessee’s direct sales of land and somewhat more than $19,000 from the sales, between 1832 and 1859, of the twenty thousand acres acquired under the 1822 Compact.