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Princeton’s history of Indian education, dating back to the 18th century, illustrates white Americans’ ambivalent views of American Indians.

William Potter Ross—a Princeton alumnus, Cherokee chief, and Confederate officer during the Civil War—advocated for Cherokee sovereignty in part by defending the practice of slavery.

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.

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.