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Prospect House and Palmer House, both now University properties, have deep links to the Potters—a slaveholding family with strong ties to Georgia as well as to Princeton and the College of New Jersey.

Tensions between Unionist and Secessionist students reached their peak in 1861, shortly after the outbreak of the Civil War.

Princeton’s early students from Kentucky reflected their state’s ambivalent attitude toward slavery. Though many Kentuckians opposed the institution and the state never seceded from the Union, slavery did not end in Kentucky until the passage of the 13th Amendment in 1865. Prominent state and national leaders from Kentucky, including Princeton alumni, also supported the Confederacy during the Civil War.

Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve (class of 1849) was a celebrated classical scholar and unrepentant Confederate apologist. Gildersleeve’s education at Princeton, which he considered “almost a Southern college,” shaped his defense of the South during and after the Civil War.

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.