PRINCETON BY VARNUM LANSING COLLINS NEW YORK OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS AMERICAN BRANCH: 35 WEST 32ND STREET LONDON, TORONTO, MELBOURNE, AND BOMBAY 1914 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 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 celebration 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 Green's hundred-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. Dod's "History of the College of New Jersey " (Princeton, 1844), a pamphlet of fifty pages covering the period from 1746 to 1783, and Robert Edgar's "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 288622 predecessors. While of course the aims and the evolution 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 PyneHenry 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 Besides the unpublished reminiscences and diaries in the Princeton Collection, such as the Strawbridge, Shippen, Duffield, Talmage, and Buhler documents and the Scharff-Henry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 eighteenth-century student diary preserved among the manuscripts of the Library of Congress has been of particular value. A similar 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 documents come to light before the body of the book was completed. Printed sources are indicated in the footnotes. The writer is under deep obligations to Dr. DeWitt for repeated and invaluable consultations especially on the earlier portions of the volume which have profited greatly by his criticism and knowledge, and to the Hon. Bayard Henry, of Philadelphia, for the benefit of his long and close study of the relation of the Log College to the College of New Jersey. The statement of the exact con |