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Local academies in Princeton helped maintain the relationship between the College of New Jersey and the South.

In September 1835, a crowd of students descended on Princeton’s African American neighborhood to apprehend an abolitionist. The assault underscored the presence on campus of a large number of students committed to slavery and white supremacy.

African Americans were a constant presence at the College of New Jersey as servants, support staff, research and teaching assistants, and students. They labored under harsh conditions on a campus dominated by racism and white supremacy.

Princeton affiliates helped to establish Liberia as an African colony for Black American emigrants. Robert Wood Sawyer (Class of 1838) served as a missionary among the Kru people, in the territory south of the colony.

The College of New Jersey attracted large numbers of Virginia students in the 18th and 19th centuries, contributing to Princeton’s reputation as a school for southerners. This essay focuses on three students from Virginia whose careers as clergymen and educators reflected evolving arguments about slavery and emancipation from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War.