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

Betsey Stockton (1798?-1865), a former slave of Princeton president Ashbel Green, became a prominent and respected educator in Princeton, Philadelphia, and the Sandwich Islands (present-day Hawaii).

Princeton’s faculty and students actively opposed abolition, creating a climate of fear and intimidation around the subject during the 19th century. Although some Princeton affiliates were critical of slavery, the institution demonstrated a catastrophic failure of leadership on the greatest moral question of the age.

The financial contributions of Moses Taylor Pyne (class of 1877), one of Princeton's most prominent benefactors, reveal the complex relationship between Princeton, the American sugar trade, and the slave economy.

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.