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Ten years after their graduation, alumni from the class of 1859 established a prize meant to demonstrate their class unity after the divisive Civil War years. Their efforts to reconcile North and South reflected a national trend to obscure serious ideological differences and the role of slavery in the Civil War.

Antebellum autograph books reveal the intimate, cross-sectional friendships northern and southern Princeton students formed in the years before the Civil War.

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.

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.

Local academies in Princeton helped maintain the relationship between the College of New Jersey and the South.