Site Search

In September 1835, a crowd of students descended on Princeton’s African American neighborhood to apprehend an abolitionist. The assault underscored the presence on campus of a large number of students committed to slavery and white supremacy.

Albert Baldwin Dod (1805-1845) was a Princeton professor and a slaveholder at the time of the 1840 census.

Princeton’s faculty and students actively opposed abolition, creating a climate of fear and intimidation around the subject during the 19th century. Although some Princeton affiliates were critical of slavery, the institution demonstrated a catastrophic failure of leadership on the greatest moral question of the age.

Prospect House and Palmer House, both now University properties, have deep links to the Potters—a slaveholding family with strong ties to Georgia as well as to Princeton and the College of New Jersey.

Abel Upshur’s political career began and ended with Princeton: in 1807, he was booted from the college for leading a student rebellion; in 1844, he was killed in an explosion aboard the U.S.S. Princeton. In the years between, Upshur was one the most influential pro-slavery statesmen in the antebellum United States.