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Stories

Princeton Students Attempt to Lynch an Abolitionist
by Joseph Yannielli | Antebellum (1820-1861)
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.

Endowed Professorships
by Ryan Dukeman | Reconstruction to Present (1865-)
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.

Princeton and Mississippi
by Trip Henningson | Antebellum (1820-1861)
Princeton students and their families lived in the Mississippi area decades before statehood in 1817. From the 1790s to the Civil War, Mississippians at the College of New Jersey came from elite families who built their wealth on cotton and slave labor.

Joseph Henry and Sam Parker
by Julia Grummitt | Antebellum (1820-1861)
Joseph Henry spent fourteen years at the College of New Jersey, serving as Chair of Natural History between 1832 and 1846. Sam Parker, his assistant, was a free Black man.

Moses Taylor Pyne and the Sugar Plantations of the Americas
by Maeve Glass | Reconstruction to Present (1865-)
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.
Primary Sources

Lewis C. Gunn
1840s | Antebellum (1820-1861)
A portrait of seminary student and abolitionist Lewis C. Gunn with his young son.

Estimated Disembarkations of Slaves in North America, 1701–1870
| Colonial & Early National (1746-1820), Reconstruction to Present (1865-)
Chart showing the rise of the estimated number of disembarkations of slaves brought to Cuba from Africa between the late 1780s and the mid-1840s.