By Walker Joyce
The world-famous school in Mercer County actually began in Elizabeth in 1746, which makes it 30 years older than the nation. It was one of the handful of higher education institutions that started before the American Revolution, and like Harvard and some others, it was destined to have a significant effect on our country’s founding and its crucial first decades.
Chartered as the College of New Jersey, it moved to Newark a year after its birth. It remained there for nine years before finally taking residence on its current property.
The college’s second president was Aaron Burr, Sr., a prominent clergyman at the time. He devised most of the core curriculum and enlarged the student body as the institution made Nassau Hall its headquarters. It is still the centerpiece of the school today!
Burr died suddenly, and the next several years were fluid and fractious, as the subsequent three presidents also passed in quick succession. Things finally stabilized in 1768, when John Witherspoon became the leader, and the school entered its first Golden Age.
Witherspoon was a Scottish pastor, destined to become one of our Founding Fathers. He was recruited by two other founders, Benjamin Rush and Richard Stockton, the latter of whom was another prominent figure in New Jersey affairs. All three men served in the Continental Congress and signed the Declaration of Independence.
While our break from Britain was being debated before that document’s adoption, it was Witherspoon who famously rebutted a comment that the colonies were “not yet ripe” for independence.
“Not ripe?!” the preacher replied. “We’re rotting for the want of it!”
Witherspoon’s tenure included the war years, when redcoats briefly occupied the campus, leading to the Battle of Princeton. That skirmish was part of the fabled Ten Crucial Days, which reversed our fortunes during the Revolutionary War. It was Washington’s second great victory following his legendary crossing of the Delaware, and the triumph at Trenton.
When American troops laid siege to the English soldiers at Princeton, it is said that a young artillery officer named Alexander Hamilton fired a cannon through a Nassau Hall window, decapitating a painting of George III.
The Congress was frequently on the move in those years, and for several months in 1783, it met on campus, making Princeton the temporary capital of the new United States. During that residency, several significant things happened, including the formal end of the war when the Treaty of Paris was delivered. The chamber in Nassau was also where Washington resigned his commission and received the thanks of his civilian commanders.
After the British defeat, Witherspoon turned his attention to expanding his college’s reach, beefing up the faculty and dedicating the school to turning out leaders for both the church and the secular ranks. Legions of ministers, jurists and politicians graduated, including Nicholas Biddle, Aaron Burr (Jr.), and future president James Madison. Thus, you could call Princeton the Think Tank for the first generations of the Republic.
In the mid-1800s, enrollment fell when southern students left during the Civil War. This enabled the university to become a bastion of the Union cause, even bestowing an honorary degree on Abraham Lincoln.
In the last century, Princeton has continued to turn out prominent Americans in all disciplines, such as Jimmy Stewart, Lee Iacocca, David Petraeus and Sam Alito, to name just a few.
