20Results for "1772"
Stories
Princeton in the West Indies
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Under the leadership of President Witherspoon, the College of New Jersey launched an ill-fated campaign to secure donations from slaveholding planter elites in the West Indies.
Fundraising for Nassau Hall
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Many of the donors and fundraisers who contributed to the construction of Nassau Hall had substantial personal, familial, or business ties to slavery and the slave trade.
Princeton and Slavery: Holding the Center
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Princeton University, founded as the College of New Jersey in 1746, exemplifies the central paradox of American history. From the start, liberty and slavery were intertwined.
John Witherspoon
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John Witherspoon (1723-1794), Princeton’s sixth president and founding father of the United States, had a complex relationship to slavery. Though he advocated revolutionary ideals of liberty and personally tutored several free Africans and African Americans in Princeton, he himself owned enslaved people and both lectured and voted against the abolition of slavery in New Jersey.
Student Origins
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Between 1746 and 1865, about 40% of Princeton students arrived from the slaveholding South. As college leaders recruited elite southerners, enrollment tracked the geographical spread of the slave economy.
Primary Sources
"Address to the Inhabitants of Jamaica, and Other West-India Islands"
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President John Witherspoon's address to slaveholders in the Caribbean, on behalf of the College of New Jersey.
James Habersham Jr.
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A portrait of James Habersham Jr., who attended Princeton in the 1760s.
Peter
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Newspaper advertisement for a runaway slave
Aaron Burr Jr.
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Portrait of Aaron Burr Jr. (Class of 1772), the second Vice President of the United States.
Charles Beatty
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Portrait of the Rev. Charles Beatty (c.1715-1772), who traveled to the West Indies to raise funds for the college.