As of the online publication of this essay, Princeton University is still deciding what to do with Witherspoon. The Council of the Princeton University Committee on Naming is forming its recommendation in response to the petition initiated in May 2022 to remove from its place of honor in Firestone Library Plaza between East Pyne Hall and the Chapel the statue of John Witherspoon (1723 – 1794), Princeton’s sixth president who led the (then) College of New Jersey from 1768 until his death 26 years later. This statue, commissioned by the Princeton University Board of Trustees, was dedicated in 2001. The initiators of the petition have cited as reasons for the statue’s removal their beliefs that Witherspoon “participated actively in the enslavement of human beings, and used his scholarly gifts to defend the practice.” One opponent to the proposed removal of Witherspoon’s statue submitted that the petitioners have “a tragic misunderstanding. . . of the full measure of Witherspoon on slavery.” In this present essay, I present new evidence on the duration and nature of Witherspoon’s ownership of slaves. I also briefly note Witherspoon’s connections to other evangelical Christians active in the abolition movement. By reviewing these facts—some of them not mentioned before in any of the secondary literature—I hope to present a fuller measure of Witherspoon on slavery.
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In all of this, we can still wish that Witherspoon had moved more quickly to free slaves in his own life or made the case for final abolition with more urgency. Indeed, New Jersey would become the last northern state to abolish slavery, doing so only in 1866, a year after the Civil War ended. But considering the totality of his teaching and his personal example on the issue of slavery, we ought to question any assessment that makes Witherspoon out to be someone deeply enmeshed in slavery throughout his life or in favor of the indefinite perpetuation of slavery. There is little doubt that Witherspoon was more enlightened on the issue of slavery than many of his generation, and less personally complicit in the evils of slavery than men like Jefferson, Madison, Washington, Franklin, and many of our country’s most celebrated founders.
Witherspoon was respected in his day as a great theologian, an exemplary college president, and an “animated son of liberty” whose leadership and sacrifice did much to advance the cause of the American Revolution and to establish the governing principles of the new republic. Even on the issue of slavery—though compromised by our standards—he showed himself to be moving in the right direction and called others to the same. With eyes wide open to his faults, Witherspoon’s legacy deserves to be commemorated—by the Scottish, by Americans, by Presbyterians, and, yes, by Princetonians too.
George F. Will
January 6, 2023
Excerpt: Squalls of indignation gust across campuses so frequently that they seem merely performative — synthetic, perfunctory, uninteresting. Princeton’s current contretemps, however, fascinatingly illustrates how wokeness, which lacks limiting principles, limits opposition to itself. Since 2001, a statue of John Witherspoon (1723-1794), the Presbyterian minister recruited from Scotland to be the then-college’s president, has adorned a plaza adjacent to Firestone Library.
Now the woke, who subordinate everything to “social justice” as they imagine it, demand its removal because he owned two slaves and did not advocate immediate abolition. As Princeton’s president, this “animated son of liberty” (John Adams’s description of the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence) assured the precarious institution’s survival. His students included future congressmen, senators, Supreme Court justices and a president — James Madison stayed an extra year to study with Witherspoon. . . . Princetonians for Free Speech (PFS), an alumni organization much more devoted than the university’s administration and trustees are to viewpoint diversity, notes that “the atmosphere on campus greatly inhibits students, faculty, and others from stating their true views” on “highly politicized issues,” which nowadays most issues become.
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Posted December 28, 2022
EDITORS NOTE: This is the submission sent by PFS to Princeton on the proposal to remove the statue of John Witherspoon currently being considered by the University. PFS is also submitting to Princeton the biography of Witherspoon that is posted on the front of our website and is linked here:
PFS urges alumni and other Princetonians to submit their own comments to Princeton on removal of the statue. Below this article there is information on how to submit comments.
EXCERPT: PFS will make the following points: 1. The process being followed by the Committee does not, and cannot, provide a true view of what Princetonians think on the issue in question because the atmosphere on campus greatly inhibits students, faculty, and others from stating their true views, especially where highly politicized issues are involved. 2. The debate over whether to remove the statue is not an isolated one, but rather has implications for other issues, most importantly, for free speech. 3. Removal of the statute would inevitably lead to petitions and demands to remove or rename other parts of Princeton’s history in a process that may never end. 4. Looked at more broadly, this continuing process of removing and renaming is an attempt to remove Princeton’s history, with all its complexity, in order to create a new university with a monolithic view that would make nonconforming views unwelcome.
