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Of Princeton's more than 160 endowed professorships and lectureships, four honor men who derived their fortunes from slave labor or contributed to the legacy of slavery in New Jersey and the United States.

The financial contributions of Moses Taylor Pyne (Class of 1877), one of Princeton's most prominent benefactors, reveal the complex relationship between Princeton, the American sugar trade, and the slave economy.

James Carnahan, the College of New Jersey’s longest-serving president (1823-1854), was a slave-owner and a director of the American Colonization Society of New Jersey. Records show that Carnahan owned slaves in 1820, just before assuming the presidency, and that free African Americans resided in his household into the 1850s.

A truly national denomination from the 18th century to the Civil War, American Presbyterianism encompassed a wide range of viewpoints on slavery. Prominent leaders in the church were slaveholders, moderate antislavery advocates, and abolitionists.

In 1819, Princeton Mayor Erkuries Beatty engaged a recent College of New Jersey graduate to recapture his runaway slave, Joe. The incident underscores the terror and uncertainty of enslavement in central Jersey.