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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.

Princeton’s first nine presidents all owned enslaved people 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.

In 1835, the Alumni Association of Nassau Hall responded to financial crisis with a fundraising campaign among Princeton alumni. Many of the donors who responded were southerners with ties to slavery.

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.