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In 1786, an enslaved man named Prime became one of only three enslaved people to be manumitted by act of the New Jersey legislature in exchange for his service during the Revolutionary War.

In 1819, Princeton Mayor Erkuries Beatty engaged a recent College of New Jersey graduate to recapture his runaway slave, Joe. The incident underscores the terror and uncertainty of enslavement in central Jersey.

The development of New Jersey’s legal code relating to slavery was marked by internal divisions. Ultimately, slavery was not fully abolished in the state until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865.

Samuel Stanhope Smith, Princeton’s seventh president (1795-1812), was an early defender of the unity of mankind—arguing that environment, not innate biological differences, determined one’s race.  His convictions, however, did not prevent him from owning slaves himself, and his teachings ultimately influenced Princeton alumni to establish the American Colonization Society.

Runaway slaves from the Princeton area used sophisticated knowledge of the late-18th and early-19th century’s changing legal and political landscape when they planned their escapes, forcing slave-owners to acknowledge their resourcefulness and determination to liberate themselves.