Princeton was in the nation's service decades before there was even a nation.
The University celebrated its 250th birthday five years ago. In February 1996, the University kicked off its anniversary celebration with great fanfare. Parties around the world, campus-wide celebrations and gatherings, fund-raising drives, new teaching programs and even mountain climbing marked the 16-month-long anniversary period. On Oct. 25, 1996, the University commemorated its official beginnings with a special Charter Day convocation.
Princeton was chartered in 1746 as the College of New Jersey — the fifth college to be established in the American colonies — through the efforts of seven Presbyterian followers of the Great Awakening, including six disaffected Yalies. The seventh was a Harvardian.
Classes began in Elizabethtown at the home of the first president, Jonathan Dickinson. After moving to Newark and selecting Aaron Burr Sr. as its president, the young college sought a permanent home.
New Brunswick put in a bid, but "the promised land at Princetown" proved more appealing.
Nassau Hall was constructed on its four-and-a-half-acre site between 1754 and 1756, though work continued on the building through 1762. When dedicating the half-built edifice in 1756, the trustees suggested the name Belcher Hall, in honor of the New Jersey royal governor who had granted the college its second charter in 1748.
But Belcher, with modesty unusual for a Harvard man, declined the honor, thereby earning the eternal gratitude of generations of Princetonians.
Belcher suggested the building be dedicated "to the illustrious memory of King William III of England, Prince of Orange-Nassau, the royal house of Holland."
Revolution
In 1758, the trustees called Jonathan Edwards — the eminent leader of the Great Awakening — to the presidency. Edwards was reluctant, complaining of "a constitution peculiarly unhappy, attended with flaccid solids, vapid, sizy and scarce fluids and a low tide of spirits." He finally assented — but died of smallpox five weeks after his inauguration.
The college lived on, however, and produced many leaders of the American Revolution. The war itself had a very direct impact on Princeton.
Following George Washington's surprise attack at Trenton on Christmas Eve 1776, his troops pressed on toward Princeton. Leading his forces up what is now Mercer Street, the American commander ousted retreating British troops from Nassau Hall when Alexander Hamilton's artillery crew sent a cannonball crashing through a window — reportedly destroying a portrait of King George II.
Rumor has it, however, that Hamilton — who had been rejected by Princeton — turned his cannons on Old Nassau for personal reasons.
Politics
The College of New Jersey's chief contributions to the revolutionary era were to the political, rather than the military leadership.
James Madison, Class of 1771, led a sizable Princeton contingent at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. He drafted much of the Constitution and wrote some of the famous Federalist Papers, which were instrumental in garnering support for the new Constitution's ratification.
He and William Paterson 1763, later a New Jersey governor, senator and U.S. Supreme Court justice, negotiated the famous Great Compromise, providing the basis of the government's bicameral legislature.
The College of New Jersey attracted more students each year toward the end of the century. Nassau Hall was gutted by fire in 1802, but was rebuilt with little alteration under the direction of Benjamin Latrobe, later the architect of the Capitol in Washington. The original walls still stand.
Hotbed of activism (really)
In an era of student rowdiness throughout the young republic, Princeton was no exception. Tensions between faculty and students mounted, and riotous scholars took possession of the college briefly in 1816.
This disturbance was scarcely quelled when one Sunday in 1817, students nailed shut all the entrances to "Old North," as Nassau Hall was then called, and sealed the doors of their tutors' rooms.
The University's bicentennial historian, Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker, recounted the scene: "Then rushing to the top floor, yelling 'Rebellion! Rebellion! Fire! Fire!' they broke the windowpanes, rang the bell incessantly and created a scene of the wildest disorder."
Largely because of the conservative ideological implications of Princeton's Presbyterianism, the college avoided serious debate over slavery.
After the attack on Fort Sumter, Southern students left the college in droves — many of them to fight and die in Confederate gray.
There was no lack of patriotic valor on the Northern side either. One Unionist hoisted the stars and stripes over Nassau Hall's cupola in April 1861, only to have the faculty remove the flag as a violation of the college's policy of neutrality.
National uproar followed, and within days a Union army captain risked his life to climb to the dome and raise the colors by attaching them to a weather vane. The weight of the fluttering flag bent the vane to the North, where it remained for the duration of the war.
Growth spurt
After the war came a period of growth that included the rise of many Princeton institutions that still exist today.
Athletics suddenly became a matter of intense interest, and it was at an early crew contest that Princeton athletes first sported orange and black uniforms.
The trustees adopted orange as the official color of the college, taking it from the royal colors of the house of Orange and Nassau. A prominent faculty member pleaded on both historical and aesthetic grounds that blue should be the college's second color, but students already unofficially had adopted black.
The years around the turn of the century saw many changes. The College of New Jersey marked its sesquicentennial by officially changing its name to Princeton University in 1896, though it had always been popularly known as Princeton College. Woodrow Wilson 1879 delivered the keynote address, in which he first used the now-legendary phrase "Princeton in the nation's service."
Graduate school battle
The graduate school became a separate unit in 1901, and in the process, the nation's history was affected in the most unexpected of ways. Then-University president Wilson and his nemesis Andrew West, dean of the graduate school, quarreled bitterly over where the Graduate College should be placed.
West won, and graduate students to this day must walk nearly a mile to Firestone library from West's chosen location.
Wilson, who was opposed by West in his attempts to establish residential colleges and change the eating club structure, was eventually "kicked upstairs" by West and his supporters when Wilson was convinced to run for governor of New Jersey in 1910. The rest is history.
Race relations
Princeton has also been involved in social changes occurring in the country. The road to racial integration, for example, was a slow and difficult one, and more than once racial tensions flared.
There are a few records of blacks attending classes during the 1800s. In 1876, several Southern students threatened to leave the University when President James McCosh allowed a black Princeton Theological Seminary student to attend a psychology class — a junior requirement.
When McCosh stood his ground, all but one of the bitter students relented.
Blacks were first admitted to the University during World War II as part of a military training program.
Modern issues
During the 1960s and early 1970s, the nation went through a period of great unrest, and Princeton students were among those who contributed.
In the late 1960s, students became intensely concerned with national and world issues as riots and protests erupted in response to U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
On Jan. 11, 1969, the University Board of Trustees voted 24-8 to approve the education of women "in principle." The decision was implemented with a rapidity quite unusual for Princeton, and that September, 101 female freshmen moved into Pyne Hall.
Feb. 15, 1989, about 100 students held a sit-in in Nassau Hall to demand administrative response to student issues such as eating disorders, minority affairs and alleged recruiting discrimination by the CIA. The sit-in led to a "Day of Dialogue," during which students held forums to discuss such issues with faculty and administrators. Students were encouraged to skip classes to attend the discussions.
Another change in the fabric of University life was prompted by the lawsuit of Sally Frank '80 against the three-remaining all-male eating clubs and the University. As a result of her suit, the graduate board of Cottage Club voted to admit women to the 100-year-old club in 1986, and Ivy Club and Tiger Inn opened their doors to women in 1990 and 1991, respectively.
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