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Tensions between Unionist and Secessionist students reached their peak in 1861, shortly after the outbreak of the Civil War.

On an 1855 trip to Princeton, Louisianan Ann Maria Davison visited fourteen homes in the town’s black neighborhood.  Davison’s observations convinced her that Princeton’s free black residents were intelligent and hard-working people fully capable of supporting themselves and their families—a position that contradicted common arguments in favor of slavery.

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.

Princeton student Thomas Ancrum attacked black abolitionist minister Theodore Wright during the commencement of 1836. The incident exposed the commitment to white supremacy among college students and officials.

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.