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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.

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

In 1922, Princeton affiliates founded a chapter of the Immigration Restriction League (IRL) on campus, advocating for restrictions on non-western European immigration into the United States. Though the organization dissolved in 1924, the IRL leaders’ commitment to white supremacy extended into their professional lives as influential 20th-century scholars.