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

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 extensive correspondence between antebellum Princeton student Henry Kirke White Muse and his slave-owning father illustrates the College of New Jersey’s appeal to southern students as well as its conservatism on the issue of slavery.

In 1824, Philip Lindsley—a pioneer of education in the antebellum period—delivered one of the most forceful condemnations of slavery in Princeton’s history. After relocating to the South, however, Lindsley gradually abandoned his antislavery principles, owning slaves himself and defending the institution as beneficial to enslaved people.

Hundreds of Princeton alumni served the Confederacy as soldiers, officers, and political leaders. Yet Princeton’s close involvement with the Confederate States of America has received surprisingly little scholarly attention until recently.