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News about the College of New Jersey and its students—including their connections to the South—spread across the country through multiple forms of print media.

The Witherspoon-Jackson community, centered around Witherspoon Street, comprised the heart of Princeton’s African-American community during  the 19th century.

Princeton students engaged in heated debates over slavery during the contentious 1860 election, in which New Jersey was the only northern state where Abraham Lincoln lost the popular vote.

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.

Robert Field Stockton, a naval officer and supporter of the American Colonization Society, embodied the College of New Jersey’s struggle—and eventual failure—to reconcile the cruelties of slavery with a desire to encourage harmony between the North and South.