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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.

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.

Antebellum autograph books reveal the intimate, cross-sectional friendships northern and southern Princeton students formed in the years before the Civil War.

The secession of southern states from the United States in 1860 and 1861 bitterly divided Princeton’s students along regional and political lines—prompting the withdrawal of one quarter of the student body, many of whom later fought in the Confederate Army or served in the rebel government.

Betsey Stockton (1798?-1865), enslaved as a child in the household of Princeton president Ashbel Green, became a prominent and respected educator in Princeton, Philadelphia, and the Sandwich Islands (present-day Hawai'i).