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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.

James Collins Johnson, a fugitive slave freed after an 1843 trial in Princeton, became a prominent figure in town and on campus over the course of his many decades working at the College of New Jersey.

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.

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.

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.