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

More than half of the officers and founding members of the New Jersey Colonization Society were Princeton affiliates.

John Maclean Jr., Princeton’s tenth president (1854-1868), was a non-slaveholder and held moderate antislavery views. His commitment to attracting southern students to the college and reducing sectional tension on campus, however, contributed to Princeton’s conservatism in the years leading up to the Civil War.

Between 1832 and 1863, more than 1,000 students lived in off-campus boarding houses while attending the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University). Certain boarding houses catered to large numbers of southern students.

The Civil War divided Princeton as well as the United States along regional lines, complicating the university’s patriotic history of wartime service as students and alumni fought in both the Union and Confederate forces.