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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.

Princeton University, founded as the College of New Jersey in 1746, exemplifies the central paradox of American history. From the start, liberty and slavery were intertwined.

The Civil War divided Princeton as well as the United States along regional lines, complicating the university’s patriotic history of wartime service as students and alumni fought in both the Union and Confederate forces.

In 1948, after a century of segregation, the town of Princeton integrated the white Nassau Street School and the black Witherspoon Street School with a system called the “Princeton Plan.” Contemporary reactions to desegregation revealed Princeton’s racial divisions as well as the black community’s commitment to education.

Founded and supported by 19th-century Princeton alumni, the American Colonization Society promoted the repatriation of freed slaves to a colony in Africa. Ultimately, however, colonization was more of an intellectual movement for moderately antislavery whites than a practical option for free blacks.