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As tensions over slavery led to sectional crisis in the first half of the 19th century, Princeton’s commencement addresses became increasingly pro-slavery in tone.

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.

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.

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.

Abel Upshur’s political career began and ended with Princeton: in 1807, he was booted from the college for leading a student rebellion; in 1844, he was killed in an explosion aboard the U.S.S. Princeton. In the years between, Upshur was one the most influential pro-slavery statesmen in the antebellum United States.