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Hundreds of Princeton alumni served the Confederacy as soldiers, officers, and political leaders. Yet Princeton’s close involvement with the Confederate States of America has received surprisingly little scholarly attention until recently.

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

Extensive research by the Princeton University Archives staff has determined that over 600 Princeton students and alumni fought in the Civil War. Of these, 86 died in the conflict—47 for the Confederacy, and 39 for the Union.

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.

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.