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Princeton’s first nine presidents all owned slaves at some point in their lives. Though widely considered to be forward-thinking religious, intellectual, and political leaders in the 18th and 19th centuries, they failed to align their practices with their ideals—embodying the tensions between liberty and slavery that characterized American life from the colonial period to the Civil War.

At least five Princeton presidents who served between 1756 and 1822 owned enslaved people who lived, worked—and on one occasion were auctioned off—at the President’s House on campus. During this period, the President’s House was the center of slavery at Princeton.

Aaron Burr Sr. (1716-1757), an influential scholar and religious leader of the colonial period, served as Princeton’s second president from 1748 to 1757. He oversaw the college’s move to its permanent campus in Princeton, and owned slaves while living in the President’s House.

Tapping Reeve (1744-1823), Princeton alumnus and founder of the nation’s first law school, served as co-counsel in the 1781 case Brom and Bett v. J. Ashley, Esq., which led to the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts.

The College of New Jersey attracted large numbers of Virginia students in the 18th and 19th centuries, contributing to Princeton’s reputation as a school for southerners. This essay focuses on three students from Virginia whose careers as clergymen and educators reflected evolving arguments about slavery and emancipation from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War.