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Stories

“Let the Southerns Come Here”: Letters of a Slaveholding Father and Son
by Paris Amanda Spies-Gans | Antebellum (1820-1861)
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.

Erased Pasts and Altered Legacies: Princeton’s First African American Students
by April C. Armstrong | Reconstruction to Present (1865-)
In the late-19th and early-20th centuries, several African American men attended Princeton as graduate students. Princeton president Woodrow Wilson’s administration may have attempted to erase their presence from institutional memory, creating an inaccurate historical justification for excluding black students from the university.

Princeton's Slaveholding Presidents
by R. Isabela Morales | Colonial & Early National (1746-1820), Antebellum (1820-1861)
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.

Betsey Stockton
by Gregory Nobles | Colonial & Early National (1746-1820), Antebellum (1820-1861)
Betsey Stockton (1798?-1865), enslaved as a child in the household of Princeton president Ashbel Green, became a prominent and respected educator in Princeton, Philadelphia, and the Sandwich Islands (present-day Hawai'i).

Princeton and Liberia
by Joseph Yannielli | Antebellum (1820-1861)
Princeton affiliates helped to establish Liberia as an African colony for Black American emigrants. Robert Wood Sawyer (Class of 1838) served as a missionary among the Kru people, in the territory south of the colony.
Primary Sources

"Letters on the Colonization Society"
1832 | Antebellum (1820-1861)
Pamphlet supporting the American Colonization Society, published in response to "the ardent opposition" of "some of our white citizens, and by a number of the free coloured population."

Letter from Robert Jefferson Breckinridge
September 1, 1864 | Civil War (1861-1865)
Letter from Robert Jefferson Breckinridge (class of 1820, non-graduate) to his son William Campbell Preston Breckinridge, discussing the capture of Joseph Breckinridge by the Confederate Army.

Letter from Joseph T. Crawford to the Captain-General of Cuba
May 16, 1859 | Antebellum (1820-1861)
Documents that reveal the simultaneous demand for cargo ships and slaves.

"Rebellion at Princeton"
January 31,1817 | Colonial & Early National (1746-1820)
A letter from Princeton detailing the 1817 riots, published in an Alexandria newspaper.

President Harold Dodds to Mrs. Harvey S. Firestone Jr.
December 30, 1946 | Reconstruction to Present (1865-)
1946 letter from Princeton President Harold Dodds to Harvey Firestone Jr.'s wife, thanking her for the "generous Christmas present" of Firestone Company shares that she and her husband donated to Princeton that year.