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Jonathan Edwards Sr. (1703-58), who served as Princeton’s third president for less than two months, exercised an immense influence on religious and intellectual thought in colonial North America. Though he recognized the cruelty of the slave trade and considered enslaved people his spiritual equals, Edwards himself owned slaves throughout his life and career.

Presbyterian minister Samuel Finley (1715-1766) was one of the College of New Jersey’s founding trustees and its fifth president. Upon his death in 1766, six of his slaves were sold at the President’s House on campus.

In 1783, four somberly dressed men rode into town to petition Congress: End slavery.

A firm majority of Princeton's founding trustees (sixteen out of twenty-three) bought, sold, traded, or inherited slaves during their lifetimes.

In 1786, an enslaved man named Prime became one of only three enslaved people to be manumitted by act of the New Jersey legislature in exchange for his service during the Revolutionary War.