Princeton

AMERICAN COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY SERIES AMERICAN COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY SERIES General Editor GEORGE PHILIP KRAPP Professor of English in Columbia University COLUMBIA by FKBDBBICK PAUL PRINCETON by VABNUM LANSING COIXINS IN PREPARATION HARVARD by JOHN HAYS GARDINER WISCONSIN by J. F. A. PYRE YALE by GEORGE H. NETIXETON VASSAR by JAMES MONROE TAYLOR and ELIZABETH HAZELTON HAIGHT Other volumes to follow. Historical, descriptive, and critical accounts of the more important American Colleges and Universities. Cloth, 8vo. Gilt top, decorated cover. Illustrated. Per copy 1.50 not. OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS AMERICAN BRANCH 35 WEST 82ND STREET NEW YORK CITY BELFRY OF NASSAU HALL. P R I N C E T ON BY VARNTJM LANSING COLLINS NEW YORK OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS AMERICAN BRANCH 85 WEST S2WD STREET LONDON, TORONTO, MELBOURNE, AND BOMBAY HUMPHREY MILFORD 1914 ALL RIGHTS sir OXFOBD UNIVEBSITY PRESS AMEBICAN BRANCH PREFACE THE history of Princeton from the founding in 1746 to the inauguration of Dr. John Maclean as president has been related by Dr. Maclean in his History of the College of New Jersey 2 vols., Philadelphia, 1877, a narrative based almost exclusively on the minutes of the board of trustees. For the sesquicentennial celebra tion of the founding, Dr. John DeWitt, of Princeton Theological Seminary, prepared an extended survey in three parts The Planting of Princeton College, Princeton College Administrations in the Eighteenth Century, and Princeton College Administrations in the Nineteenth Century which was published first in the Presbyterian and Reformed Review for April, July, and October, 1897, and reprinted in the Memorial Book of the Sesquicentennial Celebration. Dr. Ashbel Greenshundred-page Historical Sketch of the Origin of the College of New Jersey with an Account of the Administrations of its first five Presidents, published as a note in his Discourses Philadelphia, 1822, closes with the inauguration of President Witherspoon in 1768. Briefer sketches are W. A. Dods History of the College of New Jersey Princeton, 1844, a pamph let of fifty pages covering the period from 1746 to 1783, and Eobert Edgars Historical Sketch of the College of New Jersey Philadelphia, 1859, a pamphlet of sixty-six pages, covering the period from 1746 to 1855. In the present history, the point of view adopted will be found to be somewhat different from that of its vi PREFACE predecessors. While of course the aims and the evolu tion of the College have been considered afresh, at the same time a special effort has been made to appreciate the characteristics of the life and atmosphere of the place and the variety and color in its history. To the latter end not only has free use been made of the archives and early official documents of the University, many of them for the first time, but the Princeton manuscripts in the University library, such as the Pyne-Henry papers and the large collection of Princetoniana gathered by Colonel William Libbey and now forming a part of the Princeton Collection in the library, have been extensively used. Besides the unpublished remi niscences and diaries in the Princeton Collection, such as the Strawbridge, Shippen, Duffield, Talmage, and Buhler documents and the Scharff-Henry manuscript account of College as It is, the anonymous eight eenth-century student diary preserved among the manu scripts of the Library of Congress has been of particular value. Asimilar body of material, for the loan of which acknowledgments are due to Miss Garnett, of Hoboken, New Jersey, is a file of the college letters of James M. Garnett, an early nineteenth-century undergraduate, of which fuller use would have been made had the docu ments come to light before the body of the book was completed. Printed sources are indicated in the foot notes. The writer is under deep obligations to Dr. DeWitt for repeated and invaluable consultations especially on the earlier portions of ...