Site Search
20Results for "1819"
Stories

Strategies for Escape: A Study of Fugitive Slave Ads (1770-1819)
by Andre Fernando Biehl | Colonial & Early National (1746-1820)
Runaway slaves from the Princeton area used sophisticated knowledge of the late-18th and early-19th century’s changing legal and political landscape when they planned their escapes, forcing slave-owners to acknowledge their resourcefulness and determination to liberate themselves.

Princeton and the Colonization Movement
by Craig Hollander | Colonial & Early National (1746-1820), Antebellum (1820-1861)
Founded and supported by 19th-century Princeton alumni, the American Colonization Society promoted the repatriation of freed slaves to a colony in Africa. Ultimately, however, colonization was more of an intellectual movement for moderately antislavery whites than a practical option for free blacks.

Colonel Erkuries Beatty and the Business of Slavery in Princeton, New Jersey
by Andre Fernando Biehl | Colonial & Early National (1746-1820)
Erkuries Beatty (1759-1823), the second mayor of the Borough of Princeton, was one of a tight network of local elites who presided over college, church, and borough governance while continuing to benefit financially from slavery during an era of gradual emancipation.

John Witherspoon
by Lesa Redmond | Colonial & Early National (1746-1820)
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 slaves and both lectured and voted against the abolition of slavery in New Jersey.

Princetonians in Virginia
by Ian Iverson | Colonial & Early National (1746-1820), Antebellum (1820-1861)
The College of New Jersey attracted large numbers of Virginia students in the 18th and 19th centuries, contributing to Princeton’s reputation as a school for southerners. This essay focuses on three students from Virginia whose careers as clergymen and educators reflected evolving arguments about slavery and emancipation from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War.
Primary Sources

"Declaration of Independence"
1819 | Colonial & Early National (1746-1820)
John Trumbull's painting "Declaration of Independence." Princeton president John Witherspoon is pictured in the background facing the large table, the second seated figure from the (viewer's) right.

Runaway Slave Ads by Month (1770-1819)
| Colonial & Early National (1746-1820)
Graph showing the number of runaway slave ads published in the greater Princeton area between 1770 and 1819, by month.

Runaway Slave Ads by Quinquennial (1770-1819)
| Colonial & Early National (1746-1820)
Graph showing the number of runaway slave ads published in the greater Princeton area between 1770 and 1819.

Letter from Erkuries Beatty
March 20, 1819 | Colonial & Early National (1746-1820)
A letter from Mayor Beatty to James Hunter Ewing (class of 1818), describing the runaway slave Joe.