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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.

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

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.

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.

Princeton Theological Seminary’s 19th century faculty and students encountered enslaved people as a familiar part of life. Though early leaders of the seminary owned slaves and largely failed to condemn the institution of slavery, some notable alumni—including the first African American man to graduate from a theological seminary in the United States—became prominent antislavery activists.