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The lives and careers of Princeton’s early students from Georgia, who went on to hold prominent political positions during the colonial and Revolutionary periods, illustrate one of the key paradoxes of American history: the interconnection of slavery and liberty from the time of the country's founding.

The financial contributions of Moses Taylor Pyne (class of 1877), one of Princeton's most prominent benefactors, reveal the complex relationship between Princeton, the American sugar trade, and the slave economy.

Robert Field Stockton, a naval officer and supporter of the American Colonization Society, embodied the College of New Jersey’s struggle—and eventual failure—to reconcile the cruelties of slavery with a desire to encourage harmony between the North and South.

Patriot and theologian Samuel Hopkins (1721-1803) vigorously opposed slavery throughout his life. Paradoxically, his antislavery theology was inspired by his mentor, the slave-owning Princeton president Jonathan Edwards Sr.

Jonathan Edwards Sr. (1703-58), who served as Princeton’s third president for less than two months, exercised an immense influence on religious and intellectual thought in colonial North America. Though he recognized the cruelty of the slave trade and considered enslaved people his spiritual equals, Edwards himself owned slaves throughout his life and career.