The Princeton University Library
in the Eigthteen Century

SAMUEL DAVIES, fourth president of the college at Princeton, began the preface to the first printed catalogue of the college library, which he himself compiled, as follows:

A large and well-sorted Collection of Books on the various Branches of Literature, is the most ornamental and useful Furniture of a College, and the most proper and valuable Fund with which it can be endowed. It is one of the best Helps to enrich the Minds both of the Officers and Students with Knowledge; to give them an extensive Acquaintance with Authors; and to lead them beyond the narrow Limits of the Books to which they are confined in their stated Studies and Recitations, that they may expatiate at large thro' the boundless and variegated Fields of Science. If they have Books always at Hand to consult upon every Subject that may occur to them, as demanding a more thoro' Discussion, in their public Disputes, in the Course of their private Studies, in Conversation, or their own fortuitous Tho'ts; it will enable them to investigate TRUTH thro' her intricate Recesses; and to guard against the Stratagems and Assaults of Error: It will teach them Modesty and Self-Diffidence, when they perceive the free and different Sentiments of Men equally great and good…. [1]

On September 27, 1759, at the first meeting of the Trustees after Davies had arrived in Princeton and taken up his presidential duties, the Minutes record, "That President Davies be desired as soon as he conveniently can to take a Methodical Catalogue of the Books in the College Library, and order the same to be printed at the Expense of the College." [2] The fact that the catalogue was completed and printed under the date of January 29, 1760, just four months after the instructions of the Trustees, may suggest the high priority the young president gave to this library project.

This prefatory statement to the Catalogue of 1760 not only sounded a persistent and dominant theme of the educational theory upon which the little college was based and upon which it operated throughout most of the century, but it was also surely the most direct and forthright manifesto of the role of the library in the academic process that was published in America in the eighteenth century. [3] Although its style is of its century, with Miltonic overtones from the seventeenth century, its emphasis upon independent study, intellectual freedom, and the integration of the library with the teaching program seems thoroughly modern. This proclamation of the importance of the library and its role is so remarkable that some inquiry into its origins, both in the history of the college and in Davies's own background, seems a good starting point for a history of the Princeton University Library.

A brief chronology may help keep the facts in order. The college was opened in May of 1747 under the provisions of a charter granted in 1746 under Acting Governor Hamilton. Its origins lay in the rising demand for a college of genuine quality to fill the need both for broadly educated men in the learned professions and for scholarly ministers of the gospel in the pastorates of the Middle Colonies and the developing regions to the south and west. Its purposes were outlined in this order in a statement prepared for a fund-raising trip to Britain in 1752: "It will suffice to say that the two principal Objectives the Trustees had in view, were Science and Religion. Their first Concern was to cultivate the Minds of the Pupils, in all those Branches of Erudition, which are generally taught in the Universities abroad; and to perfect their Design, their next Care was to rectify the Heart, by inculcating the great Precepts of Christianity, in order to make them good Men." [4]

Jonathan Dickinson, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Elizabeth Town, New Jersey, was elected the first president and taught the eight or ten students temporarily in his own parsonage in the hope that permanent buildings could soon be erected in Princeton, which had already been tentatively selected as an appropriately central and salubrious location. In spite of this concern for health, the first five presidents were to die in office within fourteen years, President Dickinson having died of pleurisy within a few months after his inauguration, the Reverend Aaron Burr took over the leadership of the little college in the fall of 1747 and moved it to his parsonage in Newark.

After a variety of vigorous efforts, with particular assistance from Governor Jonathan Belcher, who had secured a revised and sounder charter, sufficient funds were raised to construct Nassau Hall and the President's House. In November of 1756 the President and the students, now numbering about seventy, moved to the permanent home of the college in Princeton. President Burr, the importance of whose services to the college has still not been adequately recognized, did not live long enough to enjoy the new and commodious quarters. He died in the early fall of 1757, soon after preaching Governor Belcher's funeral sermon, and was succeeded by Jonathan Edwards. That great theologian and phi- losopher, who had been an advisor of his son-in-law Burr on college matters, had just arrived in Princeton when he died in March of 1758 of a smallpox inoculation.

Edwards was succeeded, after some disagreement in the Board and some reluctance on the part of the nominee, by Samuel Davies, who, at the request of the Trustees, had undertaken an arduous but successful fund-raising journey to Britain about five years earlier and who, at 36, was probably the most famous pulpit orator in America.

Davies in his turn lasted only eighteen months as president, dying in February of 1761 after a productive if brief term of office, The Reverend Samuel Finley, who had been head of the well-known academy of Nottingham, was elected to follow Davies. Finley's term of five years was one of general growth for the college, the number of students having risen to 120 by 1764.

Whether the death in office of five presidents in less than fifteen years made them seek tougher stock or whether it was thought that the appointment of a distinguished foreigner might help close the rift in the American Presbyterian church, the Trustees decided

to offer the presidency to John Witherspoon, pastor at Paisley in Scotland and already a leader in the Scottish church. After a trans-atlantic courtship, he was finally persuaded to accept. He arrived in Princeton in August of 1768, and until his death in 1794 he led the college with determination and vigor through the difficult times of Revolution and postwar recovery, quickly acquiring a role of political leadership to parallel his leadership in educational and theological matters. At the same time that he was active in the struggle for independence, he made Princeton the center of intellectual currents that helped mold the philosophy of the new nation.

Witherspoon's son-in-law, Samuel Stanhope Smith, succeeded him in May of 1795. His administration marked the transition to the new century in spirit as well as in chronology. [5]

*

The origins of Princeton were doubly rooted in dissent. [6] The ministers of the gospel who founded the college, like the founders of Harvard and Yale, had, of course, many points of disagreement with the established church, the Church of England, in theology and in ecclesiastical government. The founders of Princeton, in addition, perceived a need for the new college because, as New Lights, they differed from the more conservative Old Lights of the Presbyterian church.' [7] As Richard Hofstadter and Wilson Smith point out, "Byand large the early colleges were set up to propagate the orthodoxies of their denominations and communities…" but "a new note, imposed by the interdenominational politics of New Jersey, was struck in the Princeton charter: students could not be excluded from or discriminated against in college because of their religion." [8] For these reasons the intellectual climate at Princeton in its colonial period was a little different from that at the other colleges.

The Charter of 1746, noting that "the said Petitioners have also expressed their earnest Desire that those of every Religious Denomination may have free and Equal Liberty and Advantage of Education in the Said College notwithstanding any different Sentiments in Religion," established the structure of the college laws, "not excluding any Person of any religious Denomination whatsoever from free and Equal Liberty and Advantage of Education, or from any of the Liberties, Privileges or immunities of the Said College on account of his or their speculative Sentiments in Religion and of his, or their being of a Religious profession Different from the said Trustees of the College." [9] In the Charter of 1748, a revision of the earlier Charter of 1746, the italicized words were dropped, perhaps because the word "speculative" seemed needlessly provocative. Both charters are surprisingly liberal. Not always are those who have battled for their own freedom, particularly in matters theological, so ready to extend a measure of freedom to others. [10]

The founders of Princeton and many of their associates, mostly Presbyterian clergymen, were uncommon men. To come to grips with them as persons it is necessary to get rid of certain stereotypes. Perhaps it was the age of the Volstead Act that evoked the image of the Protestant preacher as a blue-nosed killjoy, fanatical and illiterate. Perhaps the typical minister did become a different sort of person in the great wave of religious change that swept over America in the early decades of the nineteenth century. At any rate, these eighteenth-century Presbyterians do not fit the later image.

Any notion that they may have been teetotallers vanishes immediately if one glances at the innkeeper's bill for a college function. [11] They had no difficulty in accepting the lottery five times as a legitimate device for college fund raising. [12] Nor were these men earnest but uncultured backwoods evangelists, as some practitioners of other sects were. Aaron Burr, the second President, was the head of a struggling little college in the colonies with only a handful of students. Yet he could write in terms of easy familiarity to Philip Doddridge, perhaps the most famous of the English Dissenting ministers, urging him to use his influence at Court lest Jonathan Belcher, a friend of the college, lose his office to Chief Justice Morris, who was seeking the post and who might be less friendly. "So that whatever you do to support his Excellency's Interest at the Court of Great Britain will be a very acceptable Service to Church and State…In the present state of Affairs Tis of more Consequence to the Interest of Religion to have a good Governor in the Jerseys than any of the other Provinces." [13]

A little later, anticipating the death of the ailing Governor and believing that his son, Jonathan, Chief Justice of Halifax, would be a worthy successor, he wrote to the Reverend George Whitefield, "If you could by the Marquiss [sic] of Lothian, Lady Huntington or any other of your Friends at Court forward that Matter you would do a most Acceptable piece of service to all your Friends here and indeed to the whole Province.” [14]

Yet at the same time that Burr could deal with imperial politics with this assurance, he was himself attending to the whole range of duties that went with the management of a small, rather isolated, understaffed boarding college, as his account book indicates. [15] It records tuition, paid and not paid, textbooks bought and sold to students, even shoes and articles of clothing provided. The President of the College of New Jersey before the Revolution obviously had to be international diplomat, teacher, spiritual advisor and counselor in loco parentis, business manager, bookseller – and librarian.

Burr and many of his associates in the formative years of the college were indeed deeply religious preachers. Their interest in the young college was in a literal sense a consuming one. They were in addition broadly learned, politically sophisticated men of affairs. Bernard Bailyn has characterized the importance of the clergymen in the cultural life of the colonies: “For the vast majority of Americans it was the clerics who provided the continuing contacts with the explicit, articulate cultural inheritance. They were the main agents of transmission, and the way in which they fulfilled this role affected the character of the evolving culture.” [16]

Nor was the college itself simply a rural preparatory school. From the very beginning, because of the conditions which produced it and because of the quality and the efforts of the men surrounding it, Princeton aroused interest and enthusiasm not only in the North American colonies but also in Britain.

It is against this general background that one must place Samuel Davies’ preface to the Catalogue of 1760. Another document of the same period, An Account of the College of New Jersey, a pamphlet which appeared four years after the library catalogue, makes it clear that the surprising liberality and modernity of Davies’ concept of education was not an isolated personal view but was a matter of institutional policy. The name of the author does not appear, probably to emphasize that this was an institutional statement, as the title page indicates, “published, by order of the Trustees, for the information of the public; particularly of the friends and benefactors of the institution, in Europe and America.” The author was Samuel Blair, a graduate of the Class of 1760 and a tutor in the college from 1761 to 1764. A genuine interest in the techniques of teaching is obvious:

The usual method of instruction in the sciences is this. The pupils frequently and deliberately read over such a portion of the author they are studying, or a particular science, as it is judged they can be able thoroughly to impress upon their memories. When they attend their recitations, the tutor proposes questions on every particular they have been reading. After they have given, in their turns, such answers as shew their general acquaintance with the subject, he explains it more at large; allows them to propose any difficulties; and takes pains to discover whether his explications be fully comprehended. Advantages, which are seldom attainable, in the usual method of teaching by lecture. [17]

I have emphasized the last clause because it seems to me to underscore the concern of the college with genuine teaching, with the understanding of principles rather than the mere memorization of facts, with the development of the capacity for independent thought. [18]

Then follows this remarkable and admirable statement: "In the instruction of youth, care is taken to cherish a spirit of liberty and free enquiry; and not only to permit, but even encourage their right of private judgment, without presuming to dictate with an air of infallibility, or demanding an implicit assent to the decisions of the preceptor." This absence of dogmatism and encouragement of independent thinking leads straight to the library, and, echoing Davies, Blair makes the role of the library explicit: "The Senior, Junior, and (towards the conclusion of this year) the Sophomore classes are allowed the free use of the college library that they may make excursions beyond the limits of their stated studies into the unbounded and variegated fields of knowledge; and, especially, to assist them in preparing their disputations, and other compositions." [19]

The ground was already prepared at Princeton by the time Davies arrived to lay out so clearly his view of the library and education. A college tradition, I suppose, is something that makes it different from other colleges down through the years. If an institution only five years old can be said to have a tradition, Princeton already had by 1752 the tradition of teaching that has persisted in varying forms for more than two centuries.

Aaron Burr, in addition to all his other admirable qualities, must have been a great teacher, hailed by his contemporaries for "his easy, familiar methods of instruction." [20] By 1752 his methods had become the methods of the institution, and when the Trustees published a promotional pamphlet in that year in anticipation of the Davies-Tennent trip, they were inclined to boast that Prince- ton's undergraduate education was just a little better than that offered elsewhere:

It may be said, without any intention of disparagement to other learned seminaries, that the governors of this college have endeavored to improve upon the commonly received plans of education. They proceed not so much in the method of a dogmatic institution, by prolix discourses on the different branches of the sciences, by burdening the memory and in- fusing heavy and disagreeable tasks; as in the Socratic way of free dialogue between teacher and pupil, or between the students themselves, under the inspection of their tutors. In this manner, the attention is engaged, the mind entertained, and the scholar animated in the pursuit of knowledge. [21]

The preceptorial system was not invented out of whole cloth by Woodrow Wilson in 1905. It had its roots in the college even before Nassau Hall was built.

While the strikingly liberal views on education and the library expressed in the Catalogue of 1760 were clearly a formulation of a general educational philosophy that already existed in the college -- continuity being provided by the Trustees and a closely-knit body of graduates -- in accounting for these views one needs to look closely at their author, Samuel Davies, his background and his experience.

Samuel Davies, born in 1723 in a Welsh farming community in New Castle County, Delaware, attended the elder Samuel Blair's school at Fagg's Manor in Chester County, Pennsylvania. This school was set up on the model of the elder William Tennent's famous Log College. The speculation cannot be resisted that something in the teaching of Samuel Blair, Sr. prepared the seedbed for the growth of the educational theories expressed by Samuel Davies in 1760 and by Samuel Blair, Jr. in 1764. [22] The elder Blair had been born in Ulster, had come to America in early youth, and had been educated at the Log College under William Tennent. [23] Something in that fertile soil seems to have encouraged the growth of imaginative educational ideas.

Particularly relevant to our inquiry are the eleven years that Samuel Davies spent ministering to the Presbyterians and other nonconformists in Hanover County, Virginia, interrupted only by his trip to Britain for Princeton. In Virginia he rode to congregations in as many as seven separate meeting houses scattered through I five counties. [24] In this rather unpromising locale extending from the edge of Tidewater west to the effective frontier he "established Presbyterianism so firmly…that by the late 1750s he had probably become the most celebrated of American Presbyterians," [25] and at the same time he was judged by qualified contemporaries the finest pulpit orator of his generation. The young Patrick Henry is said to have attended his sermons and analyzed his oratorical style. [26]

His most important achievement in Virginia, however, was his continuing and largely successful battle against the established church to win the legal right to preach the gospel, maintaining that his sort of preaching was legal under the Act of Toleration of 1689. A student of these political activities concludes, "His grappling with the legal restraints set a precedent and tone in Virginia that had broad implications. Davies was recognized as

the liberal, the radical of his time, and his followers were the same for their era of revolution and separation of church and state." [27] Davies argued only for toleration, but his efforts must have had some effect in softening up the establishment and thus indirectly helped pave the way for Jefferson's religious freedom bill in 1786. [28]

Davies was a political radical only in the context of his time and place. Indeed one of the reasons he is said to have won the good will of the royal governor was the great success of his recruiting sermons in bringing out volunteers to defend the frontier against the Indians in the French and Indian War. Yet the experience of marshalling arguments against a rigid orthodoxy, of defending firmly over a period of years the right to be different, must have given his mind a certain temper by the time he sat down in 1760 to write a few sentences about liberal education and books and libraries.

There is plenty of evidence in his letters and journals of his deep interest in books and reading and in education. The strong Presbyterian commitment to an educated and even a learned ministry extended in some degree to the education of congregations. Jonathan Edwards had urged, "Consider yourselves as scholars or disciples." Douglas Sloan observes: "Probably none exerted themselves as vigorously as did Davies in Virginia to assist his congregation in carrying out this commission. Davies did not establish an academy, probably because his many other responsibilities prevented it, but he encouraged several who did, and he constantly tried to supply the people in his churches with books and reading material. He wrote often to his friends in London and Scotland requesting donations of books for the poor whites and slaves in his congregations, and he tried to see that the little reading material that was available was passed around from church to church." [29]

His curiosity extended beyond books to life, and he becomes for us the more human because of it. In the diary of his British journey he wrote, "When I came to N. Castle in the Evening, I found a Comedy called the Careless Husband was to be acted: and as I apprehended I should not be known, and consequently m could give no Offence, I went to gratify my Curiosity. But the Entertainment was short of my Expectation." [30] It is perhaps just as well that the representative of Princeton and the American Presbyterian ministry was not seen in attendance at Colley Cibber's somewhat racy comedy, but no preacher lacking in a sense of humor could have written the final sentence of this entry.

Davies himself was the author of sermons and hymns that went through many editions; his poems were widely read and were the subject of a continuing critical debate in the columns of the Virginia Gazette in the colony's capital. Only such interests could have made him accept the invitation of the Trustees of Princeton to take a leave of absence from his Hanover congregations and his beloved wife to go with Gilbert Tennent on an extended trip to England and Scotland, 1753-55, to solicit gifts of money and books for the struggling college. And only the same concerns could have made him leave Hanover permanently in 1759 to become President of the college after declining the election the year before, "even though he was assuming the foremost position his church could convey." [31]

As President, in the brief period before his early death, "he surprised even himself by the zeal with which he proceeded to reform and modernize everything, so that ultra conservatives began to sigh for the good old days of unwatered Calvinism. They took

fright in his unfeigned joy in promoting secular studies and filling the library shelves with volumes on mathematics and Newton's philosophy." [32]

In seeking an institutional model for the sort of educational theory that both Davies and Blair were expressing with such clarity and enthusiasm, one notes the substantial impact upon the college of John Witherspoon's arrival in 1768 from the Scottish universities. But the kind of educational enterprise Princeton was to be had already been determined before the advent of Witherspoon. As to the English universities, an English historian of education has summarized the situation: "Yet when all is said and every allowance made, it must be admitted, on the evidence of some of the most gifted of their students and the verdict of impartial historians, that the English universities during the eighteenth century were generally in a state of repose, not to say coma, undisturbed by the fresh vigorous thinking of men conscious of the problems with which they were faced in religion and politics, industry and commerce." [33]

It was fortunate, therefore, that the natural affinities of most of those who were establishing new colleges in the North American colonies lay elsewhere. The Conformity legislation of 1662 and later years had effectively driven dissenting dons out of Oxford and Cambridge. To meet the need for higher education conducted free of the restrictions of the Test Act, the "Dissenting Academies" began to appear toward the end of the seventeenth century. Often supported by wealthy dissenters in the rising merchant class, many of these unofficial institutions flourished until near the end of the eighteenth century. These academies, although nearly always small, were not preparatory schools, but educational institutions of university grade, with formal curricula extending for four or five years. The period during which they flourished was a critical one in the founding of American educational institutions and in the establishment of democratic traditions in the New World. As Bernard Bailyn has summarized the situation, "Only the academies broke free [from inertia and traditionalism], and though they too carried over traditional elements, they were uniquely progressive institutions. In them an impetus, built up within the confines of nonconformist intellectual life, and bearing…peculiar proclivities for the new science, was released with great innovating force. This impulse carried over into the colonies where dissent was endemic, where intellectual restraints were negligible, and where the response to motions in English intellectual life were continuous, quick, and sensitive." [34]

For somewhat similar reasons there had grown up in Ulster institutions bearing some resemblance to the Dissenting Academies in England. The Scotch Presbyterians in northern Ireland were forbidden to attend the university in Dublin and the journey back to the universities in Scotland was difficult and expensive. Thus "Presbyterian academies" began to appear, and the pattern was brought to America in the wave of Scotch-Irish migration. Douglas Sloan discusses these academies and their relation to Princeton: "The first Presbyterian academies were founded by men who had come directly from Ulster or Scotland, but after mid-century most of the academies were established by graduates of the College of New Jersey and the pattern was repeated as these academies in turn sent out their students." [35] From the founding of the Log College in 1747 down to 1802 at least sixty-five academies have been identified. Although some of them trained young men for the ministry, many were grammar schools only. They do not seem to have been studied enough to permit generalizations here about the influence of their educational theories and practices upon Samuel Davies, David Blair, and their associates, although it is perfectly clear that the general influence of the remarkable Log College group was a pervading one in the early years of Princeton.

It is to the Dissenting Academies, then, that we must look for many of the sources of institutional and educational policy underlying Samuel Davies's remarkable preface to the Catalogue of 1760 and David Blair's elaboration in 1764 of an educational procedure which gave such importance to books and the college library. [36] The influence was not, of course, a matter of slavish imitation, but the growth of similar ideas, nourished by correspondence, by the American environment, and sometimes by personal experience such as that of Davies himself. The channels through which the influences flowed are relatively clear .

*

The influence of Aaron Burr, President of Princeton from 1748 to 1757, was probably the most important of any of the five presidents before John Witherspoon, if only because he survived long enough to have a sustained impact. Burr corresponded on educational as well as political matters with Philip Doddridge, who was head of the influential academy at Northampton. Their correspondence is the easy and allusive discourse of two able men with similar backgrounds and values, engaged in a demanding occupation and sharing professional ideas and gossip.

Burr's letter of May 31, 1750, for example, begins with an expression of pleasure in Doddridge's books and gratification that these books are spreading in Germany. Burr thanks his English correspondent for his friendship for "our infant college." There is gossip about the envy of "some among our Episcopal Brethren" and the fact that "others of our own Denomination are jealous of the spread of Calvinism & what has been here branded with the odious name of New Light." He tells the story of a student Latin oration of such quality that it immediately convinced a critic of the College of New Jersey. Then there is talk about a Professor of Oriental Languages whom the college needs but cannot afford and reference to a possible candidate recommended by Doddridge. Burr expresses his pleasure in "the flourishing state of your academy," comments on his own current reading, asks what Doddridge thinks of Grove's Moral Philosophy as a student text. He is gratified with the report of his English friend's interview with the Archbishop of Canterbury. "The Disquisition, etc. was a very acceptable present to our Library." [37] In this sort of atmosphere the flow of ideas across the Atlantic was easy.

There was even more direct contact. Although the diary which Samuel Davies kept on his British trip of 1753-55 records his introspective musings on his own unworthiness and the varying inspirations for his sermons more than his discussions of educational theory, it is clear that he talked with the leaders in the academies. While he may have been a bit shocked at times, the experience of meeting a large number of prominent nonconformists with widely differing views certainly is a part of the background of this statement from the preface: "It [the availability of books] will teach them Modesty and Self-diffidence, when they perceive the free and different Sentiments of Men equally great and good…" The trip was a part of Davies's education in tolerance.

Fryd. July 19. Rode to Hull, in Company with a friendly Gent. Mr. Ellis, Minister of Cave, one of Dr. Doddridge's Pupils, who like many others of them has embibed the modern sentiments in Divinity. The very word Orthodox is a Subject of Ridicule with many here. The Dissenting Ministers here take greater Liberties than I should chuse. They make no Scruple of gaming, attending on Horse-Races, mingling in promiscuous Companies on the Bowling-Green, etc. [38]

The influence of the Dissenting Academies is specifically visible, it seems to me, in two broad areas, teaching methods and curriculum. The former is of more interest in the consideration of the role of the library in the educational process. The library collection must always reflect to some degree the subjects studied, but there is room for wide differences in the extent to which the teaching process demands that the library be used or, at the other extreme, simply ignored. A contemporary participant's description of the teaching method and the overall atmosphere of intellectual freedom at Northampton Academy in 1752, the year after Doddridge's death, parallels closely what we have seen Davies and Blair saying about Princeton eight to twelve years later:

In my time the academy was peculiarly favourable to the serious pursuit of truth, as the students were about equally divided upon every question of much importance, such as Liberty and Necessity, the sleep of the soul and all the articles of theological orthodoxy and heresy; in consequence of which all these topics were the subject of continual discussion. Our tutors also were of different opinions…Our lectures had often the air of friendly conversations on the subjects to which they related. We were permitted to ask whatever questions and to make whatever remarks we pleased, and we did it with the greatest, but without any offensive, freedom. The general plan of our studies…was exceedingly favourable to free inquiry, as we were referred to authors on both sides of every question, and even required to give an account of them…The public library contained all the books to which we were referred. [39]

This is the testimony of Joseph Priestley, who was the product of one of the Dissenting Academies, Northampton, and tutor at two others. This laudatory account by the famous scientist may be slightly suspect as the glowing recollection of a youthful period by a man whose pursuit of truth had since led him considerably beyond any nonconformist orthodoxy in theology or in politics. Yet one can also speculate that a radical, having gone so far, might have remembered his old school as stifling. Shelley in retrospect would hardly have found the Oxford of 1811 favorable to the serious pursuit of truth, as Priestley found Northampton.

The linking of the library with these assigned books "on both sides of every question" (in complete conformity to the American Library Association's Library Bill of Rights) underscores the relation of these pedagogical methods to our contemporary concept of "teaching with books." That great man, Philip Doddridge, took another step into the mid-twentieth century by giving occasional lectures on the library at Northampton, an early example of "library instruction." [40] Doddridge's method, which he emphasized so strongly that he became famous -- or infamous -- for it, was described by a former pupil, Job Orton: "He never concealed the Difficulties, which affected any Question, but referred them to the Writers on both Sides, without hiding any from their Inspection." [41]

John Taylor, already a famous liberal theologian when he became head of Warrington Academy in 1757 , addressed his students at the beginning of the year and outlined for them the guiding principles of the institution:

I.                    I do solemnly charge you…that in all your studies…you do constantly,

carefully, impartially, and conscientiously, attend to evidence, as it lies in the Holy Scriptures, or in the nature of things and the dictates of reason, cautiously guarding against the sallies of imagination and the fallacy of ill-grounded conjecture.

II.                 That you admit, embrace or assent to no principle or sentiment, by me

taught or advanced, but only so far as it shall appear to you to be supported and justified by proper evidence from Revelation, or the reason of things.

III.               That if at any time hereafter any principle or sentiment by me taught or advanced, or by you admitted or embraced, shall upon impartial and faithful examination, appear to you to be dubious or false, you either suspect or totally reject such principle or sentiment.

IV.              That you keep your mind always open to evidence; that you labor to banish from your breast all prejudice, prepossession and party-zeal; that you study to live in peace and love with all your fellow Christians; and that you steadily assert for yourself and freely allow to others, the inalienable rights of judgment and conscience. [42]

One wonders how fully this high standard of rationality and academic freedom prevailed in real life, but it was certainly given more than lip service.

It is my impression that this enthusiastic insistence that students make up their own minds declined a bit at Princeton with the arrival of John Witherspoon. He approved of the method in principle, but having used it himself to arrive at the Truth, his forceful personality may have made it difficult for his students not to unquestioningly accept that Truth. In his course on moral philosophy he refers students to a variety of authors as diverse as Shaftesbury, Mandeville, Wollaston, Hume, and even "the whole Deistical Writers, & the answers written to each of them in particular." [43] In his treatment of them the Doctor may not have been quite so evenhanded as Doddridge is said to have been, however . His summary of Hume's position makes no attempt to conceal the fact that Witherspoon, as usual, held a firm position: "David Hume has a scheme of morals that is peculiar to himself, he makes everything that is agreeable, & useful, virtuous & vice versa. By which he entirely annihilates the difference between natural and moral qualities, making Health, Strength, Cleanliness, as real Virtues as Integrity & Truth."

There was almost certainly more lecturing than Priestley's "air of friendly conversations" in Witherspoon's classroom. Furthermore, as president of the college he was unwilling to tolerate the teaching by others of philosophical systems to which he was totally opposed. At least Ashbel Green records one such instance: "The Berkeleyan system of Metaphysics was in repute in the college when he entered on his office. The tutors were zealous believers in it, and waited on the President, with some expectation of either confounding him, or making him a proselite. They had mistaken their man. He first reasoned against the System, and then ridiculed it, till he drove it out of the college." [44] The principal tutor involved was Joseph Periam of the Class of 1762. He resigned at the end of the year, but since he took with him a testimonial from the Trustees, it is not clear whether or not he was discharged for his injudicious advocacy of the ideas of Bishop Berkeley.

Nevertheless, much of the liberalism of the Enlightenment was reflected in Princeton's educational theories and in Witherspoon's approach to education. At the least he wanted his students to be exposed to books in which differing points of view were offered. His lecture notes are heavy with bibliographic references. Students were clearly expected to read widely, and it is easy to see why President Witherspoon was willing to work so hard to build up the college library.

It is clear beyond any reasonable doubt that the methods of instruction developed and in use at the Dissenting Academies and adopted at Princeton and other American colleges placed heavy emphasis upon the use of books and libraries. [45] By a twist of history not unique in library annals, the Academies, where the teaching methods demanded books, had weak libraries because of their small size and their relatively brief history, while the somnolent old colleges of Oxford and Cambridge had rich collections. It was clearly the central place of the library in the teaching process that made the Princeton presidents and trustees give such a high priority to developing the library.

The other great influence of the Dissenting Academies on Princeton and other American colleges was upon their curricula. There is a rather surprising amount of detailed evidence on what was taught in the colonial colleges and even what textbooks were used, in published catalogues and promotional essays, in the minutes of faculties and trustees, in student letters and diaries. There is also a surprising amount of difference in the interpretation of this evidence.

An early student of educational history, Louis Franklin Snow, concluded that:

The scheme at Princeton in 1764 [as outlined by Blair] has little to offer as a means of culture and of training for the general student that has not already been included in the Laws and Orders of Harvard as prepared by President Dunster in 1642. The Cambridge curriculum is having its perfect work. Pure and unmixed it was received. In this manner it was transmitted. It was only the disruption of the Revolutionary War and the readjustment necessarily following, which led to its decadence and replacement, in these colleges, by something more comprehensive and better fitted to train for citizenship, a purpose wholly different from the ideal that governed colonial Princeton, Harvard, and Yale. [46]

Even leaving aside the fact that the pre-Revolutionary Princeton graduate did in fact have a remarkable record of "citizenship," this summary is hard to square with the evidence. A later student has come to quite different conclusions.

From the Log College, Yale, and Harvard, it [Princeton ] drew its emphasis on the classics, and from the dissenting academies in England as well as from its parent institutions in this country, the lively interest in science which was characteristic of the century….. Princeton became not the college of a single synod or a single religion, or a single colony, but a more broadly conceived institution which served the purpose of secular education as well as the standards and the gradual secularization of purpose…. The application to politics of the eighteenth-century faith in reason and in the methodology of science led to an American justification for rebellion, for fealty to such principles as the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were thought to have the same empirical validity as the acceptance of Newtonian mathematics. The emphasis on science under the first five presidents had prepared the Princeton soil for this approach to politics, but it did not flower until Witherspoon brought the immediate impulse from Scotland. [47]

This argument may claim too much, but it does emphasize correctly, I think, the importance given to science at eighteenth-century Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.

In making his appeal for benefactors to remedy the deficiencies revealed in the Catalogue of 1760, Samuel Davies emphasized the greatest need: "…few modern authors, who have unquestionably some Advantages above the immortal Ancients, adorn the Shelves. This Defect is most sensibly felt in the Study of Mathematics, and the Newtonian Philosophy, in which the Students have but very imperfect Helps, either from Books or Instruments." [48] Samuel Blair four years later was repeating the need for modern books: "The library wants many of the most approved modern writers, as hath been already hinted." [49]

These pleas for modern books and particularly for scientific books mirror the principal innovations in curriculum of the Dissenting Academies. One aspect of the curriculum of the Academies which was clearly echoed in America was the strong emphasis upon natural science. For some tutors, science was one more avenue of revelation, another way of understanding God's great purpose; others, such as Priestley, emphasized the utilitarian aspects of science. Natural philosophy was usually taught experimentally, or at least by demonstration, thus requiring "philosophical apparatus." Hence we find Davies in the same sentence lamenting the lack of books and the lack of instruments, and the various appeals for assistance almost invariably link the two. In the General Account of 1754, for example, the Trustees list among the needs: "furnishing the Library; which is at present very small; and procuring a proper Apparatus for philosophical Experiments." [50] While the need for books on mathematics was emphasized by Davies, the leaders of some of the Academies, including Doddridge, believed the subject to have only limited value.

Another fixture in the curricula of the Academies was of course found in the English universities as well and in the American colonial colleges -- the heavy load of courses in Latin and Greek and, for theological students, in Hebrew. The Academies took the lead, however, in dropping Latin as the medium of instruction. [51] There is some debate about when the practice of using English rather than Latin as the language of instruction became general - and about the extent to which it was borrowed from the Scottish universities; Princeton of course had channels to both the Academies and the Scottish universities. [52]

Another innovation of the Academies was the study of the English language, primarily composition, with some attention paid to examples of English literature as correct models. The emphasis of Protestantism upon preaching may have been indirectly responsible for the considerable time spent in elocution and oral expression in the vernacular. At Princeton one is struck by the importance given to "orations" in English and Latin, which survive still today, in form at least, in the two student addresses at Commencement, the Latin Salutatory and the English Valedictory. The study of the French language was introduced in some of the Academies and at Princeton after Witherspoon's arrival (but for an extra fee.) In another emphasis on the modern some of the Academies introduced the study of modern history, including political theory. Witherspoon's famous lectures on moral philosophy at Princeton devoted a great deal of attention to theories of politics. [53]

*

It would be of interest to analyze the collections of the library in relation to the curriculum, to show that there was (or was not) a core collection carefully selected to support specific courses, supplemented by additional readings which were (or were not) radical in terms of the prevailing philosophy or theology of the faculty. It would be interesting to check the collection against the titles sorted into categories by David Lundberg and Henry F. May to analyze the relative popularity of the various periods and strands of the Enlightenment. [54] But these studies cannot be made, or rather, if made would give fraudulent answers, because of our limited knowledge of what was actually in the library at various times in the century, and because of the almost accidental way the collection was built. The only eighteenth-century catalog is that of 1760, compiled only fourteen years after the college opened. Its 789 titles in 1281 volumes were nearly all gifts, over a third of them from a single donor, Governor Jonathan Belcher. Any librarian knows how nearly impossible it is to maintain a policy of accepting as gifts only those books that one would have purchased in the same priority! Davies in the preface points out that the "Library in particular has been almost entirely formed of the Donations of several public-spirited Gentlemen on both Sides of the Atlantic." [55] Then he goes on to reveal the fact that the catalogue was being published not so much to show the wealth of the library as to reveal its poverty, in the hope of stimulating additional gifts: "But after all this liberal Assistance, a Survey of its literary Wealth, which is exposed to View in the following Catalogue, will soon convince the Friends of Learning and Nassau-Hall how poor it still is in this important article…." The collection thus described, almost a random assortment of books within the boundaries set by the beliefs and tastes of the donors, can obviously tell us little about the kind of library the faculty really wanted. The preface tells us that they were not satisfied with the one they had.

That the Trustees of the college instructed a new President to catalogue the library as his first official duty and that he responded with an elegant and eloquent tribute to the role of the library in the educational enterprise is striking evidence that those concerned with the infant college at Princeton believed the library to be important. That this evidence and that offered by the Samuel Blair statement merely reflect the thinking of the college authorities is amply witnessed by the concern expressed repeatedly in Trustee meetings and by the priority given the library in the repeated attempts to raise funds.

The desperately poor college demonstrated ingenuity, skill, and persistence in conceiving and following up a whole range of fund-raising activities: individual solicitation, printed and widely distributed appeals, trips abroad, testimonials from well-known individuals and organizations, appeals to the government, lotteries, and that long-standing ecclesiastical device, the sermon by a visiting minister followed by a special offering. In all of these activities, which would do credit to a modern professional university development office, the library was prominently mentioned at every possible opportunity.

Its place in the financial balance sheet of the college was indicated by Samuel Davies in his diary on July 2, 1753, at the beginning of the rather speculative trip to Britain to solicit funds for a college whose only home was a parsonage: “There is now about 3000£ in the College Fund; but this will hardly be sufficient for the Erection of the proper Buildings; and if it should all be laid out for that End, there will be Nothing left for the Maintenance of the Professors and Tutors, to furnish a College Library, and to support pious Youth for the Ministry, who are unable to maintain themselves at Learning." [56] One can imagine the young man, overwhelmed by the responsibility placed in his hands, diffidently rehearsing his central appeal on the long voyage over. Buildings, faculty salaries, and scholarship funds are still in competition today with library development, and that library is fortunate which is not forgotten at the beginning of a capital campaign. The library was not forgotten at Princeton in the eighteenth century.

Davies and Tennent took with them as a propaganda handout, A General Account of the Rise and State of the College…, the eight-page pamphlet which the Trustees had prepared in 1752. [57] Revised editions of this summary of the aims, methods, and needs of the college were published in London and in Edinburgh in 1754, so that the canvassers could have something to leave in the hands of those on whom they called. [58] A postscript to the London edition, dated March 5, 1754, said that Davies and Tennent expected to be in Scotland from April to August and it named eight gentlemen who would receive contributions in their absence. It was an efficient operation.

The new editions made the needs of the library quite specific. A footnote was added at the first mention of the library to insert the phrase, “which is at present very small,” and another, following, “the State of their Treasury, is altogether inadequate to those I chargeable Demands”: “They cannot therefore be accommodated in a Building of less than forty Rooms, with a large Hall for public Exercises, a Library-Room, a Dwelling-House for the President and other convenient Buildings: the Expense of all which, it is thought, will amount to above £2000 Sterling, besides the Charge of Enlarging the Library, and furnishing a Philosophical Apparatus.” [59]

The two emissaries were further armed for their mission with an Address to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland from the Synod of New York, dated October 3, 1753. This Address summarizes the history of the college, its importance (with appropriate emphasis for the occasion on the education of ministers), and its financial needs: "That after all the contributions that have been made to said college, or can be raised in these parts, the fund is far from being sufficient for the erection of suitable buildings, supporting the president and tutors, furnishing a library, and defraying other expenses." [60]

Davies and Tennent were able to get sixty-eight “approved Ministers of the Gospel in or near London” to sign an endorsement of their mission, which they printed over the date January 19, 1754. The needs were “for the competent support of the President and Tutors, the erection of proper buildings, and furnishing a suitable library and philosophical apparatus.”61 The endorsement from the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge has already been mentioned. Although he was aiming for bigger things, Davies did not turn down scattered books. “He [Dr. Grosvenor] offered me Baxter's or Williams's Works; but I told him that I could receive them only for the Use of the College, and in that view they would be very acceptable.”62

In spite of his long struggle in Virginia against the Established Church, Davies did not hesitate to ask his old adversaries for funds -- to his own amazement. After the Bishop of Durham had given him £5 he wrote, “It is a matter of pleasing Wonder to me, that notwithstanding the present Langour of my Spirits, and my natural Bashfulness I can with Freedom and Composure, converse with these great Men.”63

Without detailing all of the fund-raising activities which were so important to the college and the library, it is sufficient to say that each president in turn seems to have given the development of the library as high a priority as he had opportunity. John Witherspoon even before he came to America was deeply involved in activities on behalf of the library. The two Princetonians who attempted in person to persuade the Scottish minister to accept the appointment were Richard Stockton of the Class of 1748, a Trustee and later to be a cosigner with Witherspoon of the Declaration of Independence, and young Benjamin Rush of the Class of 1760, then a medical student at Edinburgh and also to become a signer as well as an eminent physician. It seems to have been Rush's enthusiasm and charm that in time overcame Mrs. Witherspoon's reluctance to leave home.64

Witherspoon's correspondence with Rush during this period is sprinkled with thoughts of the library, even during the days when it seemed as if Mrs. Witherspoon's objections would prevail.65

He wrote to Rush from Paisley on July 7, 1767, “I have used some Endeavours & hope by my self & some others to send a Present of Books to the Library by the End of this Season…. I shall be glad to know what [?] is doing for the Library in Edin[burgh ].” On October 11 he expressed concern that Mr. Beattie, another Princeton Trustee who had stopped by Paisley, “did not seem sensible of the Poverty of the College Library which surprised me.”

The library was on his mind even in the most difficult days of these negotiations. Witherspoon had after much consideration declined the offer of the Trustees, who had then appointed Samuel Blair, a 26-year-old classmate of Rush. Blair resigned before taking office when the appointment was criticized because of his youth; word may also have reached him that Witherspoon was having second thoughts and might be available after all. In the midst of this transatlantic confusion Witherspoon wrote to Rush on December 21, 1767: “I cannot think of going to Edin[burgh] or making any publick Mention of the thing till an Authentic account comes from the Trustees -- However you may let our Friends (in Edinburgh) know especially I hope who so strongly urged my compliance that I will think they use me very ill if they do not exert themselves with uncommon Vigor in the Subscriptions for their Library.” It is obvious that Witherspoon would become a library-minded college president.

On December 29, 1767, Rush, who seems to have been confident all along that Witherspoon would go to Princeton and whose mind was characteristically running ahead to the future of the library, wrote to describe a 2/6 annual library fee at Edinburgh University and of the contribution of more than this amount by most students. The income of about £100 a year “is all laid out immediately in purchasing new Books. W^d not a Law of this kind tend greatly to enrich the Library of the College of New Jersey? I have many other things of like nature to hint to you, but they must be reserved 'til I see you.” Witherspoon must have wondered from time to time if all Princeton alumni would turn out to be quite so prolific in advice. It has been said, "Rush had a talent for making friends, but a genius for making enemies.”66 In the same December 29 letter Rush goes on to urge the cultivation of a Mr. Randall, who “has it moreover in his power to collect a considerable number of Books from the people of Dundee, & other towns around him.” Then, of a Mr. Hume: “…his Library I am told is very valuable, & contains a number of Books in the Oriental Languages. If we can prevail upon him to leave even this itself to the College, the Acquisition will be valuable.”

Two letters from Witherspoon in January outline additional plans for soliciting aid for the library. This concern for funds for the library is reiterated in a number of other letters. There is even some rather sharp disagreement between the two new friends about the timing and tactics of a major library campaign in Edinburgh. Finally, on May 10, 1768, Witherspoon finds time before leaving Greenock to pass along to Rush more prospects: “I desire that my compliments be particularly paid to Mr. Kinkaid who has a very valuable collection.” In a letter written from New York on September 8 he mentions sending the thanks of the Trustees to Mr Kinkaid for his donation.

As could have been predicted from this apprenticeship, President Witherspoon was tireless in his fund-raising activities, travelling up and down the seaboard with considerable success, planning a trip to Jamaica, and stimulating the Trustees to greater activity. One of the Trustees was given so much produce in Georgia that a ship had to be chartered to bring it home.67 In Williamsburg, that center of Anglican lethargy, the President preached to a great crowd in the Capitol yard and immediately collected £66, to which Governor Botetourt was said personally to have added £50.68 Witherspoon seems to have continued his efforts on behalf of the library whenever opportunity permitted during the years he was in office.

It is difficult to imagine a more favorable climate to nourish the early years of a college library. The college proudly proclaimed an educational policy of just the sort which was likely to make the library quite central in the educational process. Presidents and Trustees repeatedly enunciated the importance of the library in their view of the aims of the institution – “the most ornamental and useful Furniture of a College, and the most proper and valuable Fund with which it can be endowed.” Of course there was very little money for the library or anything else at first, but this problem soon began to be remedied through the energetic efforts of the trustees, the presidents, the friends, and soon the graduates of the “infant seminary.”

*

But what of the physical library during these early years, the collections themselves, and the provisions made for their housing and use?

In the absence of much specific information, we must assume that under President Dickinson in Elizabeth and President Burr while he was in Newark the college library consisted of a few shelves of books, perhaps housed in Burr's study along with his own personal library. These were both bookish men, who had been teaching students independently before the college was chartered, and their libraries almost certainly contained several hundred volumes. The inventory of Burr's books made after his death lists about 285 volumes.69 Here in the study the books could be adequately protected and loaned on cautious terms to the students. The study would have been the room, I suspect, in which a considerable amount of tutoring went on. These good men, Burr especially, were excellent teachers, and when one of them reached up for a volume to elucidate a point, he probably did not care whether he was reaching to the college shelves or his own.

The first reference to the library in the surviving official records is a note in the Minutes of the Board of Trustees for September 26, 1750: “Ordered that the President be allow'd to apply Certain Donations in his and Mr. Woodruff's hands, to procure a book-Case for the Use of the College.” We may beyond doubt construe this minute as a sign that the infant library had grown in its three years of life and had already acquired a trait which would periodically plague the Trustees for two hundred years and more: the habit of quickly outgrowing the space provided for it. This particular growth may have been the product of one of the first of a fairly steady flow of gifts. The Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge had expressed its gratification upon learning that the college had been chartered by voting to send “a parcel of good books” not to exceed £30 in cost.70

The proceeds from the successful Davies-Tennent expedition must have been applied in part to the library, as planned. The Account Book kept by President Burr from 1753 to his death in 1757 records surprisingly large expenditures for books.71 For example, an entry of June 10, 1756, indicates that Mr. Buell of Easthampton was paid £21 for “books from London,” and there are substantial payments to John Ward, a London bookseller.72

It is not clear, of course, that all of these expenditures were for the library. One of the numerous duties of President Burr was to serve as the college bookseller, selling textbooks to students. Some of these charges are certainly for textbooks. A letter from John Ward to Burr contains an itemized account for the current shipment, totalling £32-7-0.73 There are ten copies of Cole's Dictionary, fourteen of Salmon's Grammar, and so on, clearly stock for the student bookstore. I suspect that the library account and the bookstore account were often hopelessly muddled, for there are also single copies of titles that could hardly be textbooks. A summary account is attached for the period October 4, 1755-September 27, 1757, totalling the substantial sum of £196-9-5. John Ward also acted as an agent for gifts for the library, several of which were forwarded with this shipment.

The first visitor to the library to have left a record, appropriately enough in view of the intellectual debt of the young college to Yale, was Ezra Stiles, later to become president of that institution. Stiles, eight years out of college and practicing law, made a trip on horseback from New Haven to Philadelphia and returned in the autumn of 1754, keeping a diary of his journey.74 On the way south,

September 24,1754

...Arrived at Newark about 3 aft. Waited on President Burr. Went to prayers, after which 2 young gent. of the college acted Tamerlane & Bejazet, &c.75

September 25, 1754

Commencement; waited on M^r. Pres^t Burr, & viewed the college library. Went to meeting, where saw a most splendid assembly of gentlemen and ladies….

Thus, about seven years after the first classes began, the college library, even if it was only a few shelves in a pastor's study, was a proper attraction for the President to show a visitor.

On his way back from Philadelphia by the regular coach route, Mr. Stiles stopped by Princeton:

October 1, 1754

Breakfasted at Ferry. Viewed the foundation & plan of the college at Princeton, 177f. long & 53 2/3 f. wide.

Then in the manuscript follow sketches of the ground floor of Nassau Hall.

After the return of Samuel Davies and Gilbert Tennent in 1754 from their very profitable fund-raising trip to England, after a successful lottery, and after the difficult decision had been made to permanently locate the college in Princeton, the Trustees met on July 22, 1754, and voted to lay the foundation of the principal college building immediately, according to a plan drawn by Dr . William Shippen, brother of the trustee Robert Shippen, and by Robert Smith, a Philadelphia architect and builder.

In November of 1756 the students, the tutors, and the library moved from Newark into the largest academic building in the colonies.76 The library room was at the center of the north (the front) side of the building on the second floor, with five windows looking out toward Nassau Street. Its position is immediately apparent in the often-reproduced engraving by H. Dawkins that accompanied Samuel Blair's Account in 1764. In spite of two great fires and substantial remodelling, those familiar with the present Nassau Hall can visualize the library of 1756 as occupying the upper part of the area now filled by the marble memorial hall which one enters from the main door, extending back from the front wall to the line of the east-west corridor. Entered almost certainly from the second floor corridor, the library room must have been about 35 feet by 20 feet in size, reflecting the sanguine hopes of the trustees for the growth of the college and the library.77

Using present-day standards for estimating shelf capacity, I calculate that wall shelving, seven shelves high, covering all walls except that with the windows and allowing for a fireplace on each of the side walls (chimneys went through these walls), would accommodate about 2600 volumes.78 This estimate makes no allowance for the scientific instruments, which may have been kept in freestanding cases. Even more volumes could have been housed, and perhaps more elegantly, if the shelves were arranged not flat against the wall but in bays, as was often the practice in larger eighteenth-century libraries. Since the five windows were spaced about eight feet on centers, well-lighted bays could have been provided, but the arrangement of the remainder of the room might have been a bit awkward.

The Harvard library was using an arrangement of this sort early in the next century, presumably installed when the library was moved to the new Harvard Hall following the great fire of 1764. Elias Boudinot, a Princeton trustee, describes the Harvard library as it was when he visited the same room in 1809: “The Library is large & well chosen, consisting of 15000 Volumes, advantageously placed in Alcoves which are very convenient. There are 5 alcoves on each side, with a window in each alcove, and the name of the Donor over the entrance in large gold Letters."79 His obvious interest in the alcove arrangement may suggest that it was unfamiliar to him, even though he knew the Princeton library well from his meetings with the Trustees and with an even more august body in that room when he was President of the Continental Congress.

It is believed that Yale's library in the mid-eighteenth century was arranged on shelves flat against the wall. The room on the second floor of the College House was occupied in 1718 and must have begun to be crowded by the time of the Yale 1743 catalogue, when 2600 volumes seem to have been shelved in a room about 21 feet by 31 feet.80

It seems clear that in the eighteenth century the college library was not thought of as a place to which the student would come to read or study. In 1770 the Princeton library was open “twice every week for the space of one hour for delivering out Books to the students."81 Yet a limited amount of browsing must have been possible during those two hours, for there must have been chairs and tables. The Trustees normally met in the library room after Nassau Hall was built,82 and other official bodies to be mentioned later met there on special occasions.

We do not know the size of the collection that was moved from Newark to the spacious new room in Nassau Hall, but an analysis of the titles printed in the Davies catalogue four years later indicates that the library had 1281 volumes (789 titles) in 1760.83 0f these volumes some 475 had come from the library's first notable benefactor, Governor Jonathan Belcher. The Trustees Minutes for September 24, 1755 take notice of the gift, then record a formal Address of Thanks. “The late extraordinary Influence of your Generosity, in endowing our public library, with your own excellent Collection of Volumes, a Set of Globes, and other valuable Ornaments, can never be mentioned by us without the most grateful Emotions.” The address then goes on to propose that the new college building be named “Belcher Hall” in his honor. The Governor's response is recorded in the Minutes of the meeting of September 29, 1756: “…I absolutely decline such an Honour.” He then goes on to suggest that the building be named “Nassau Hall,” “'as it will express the honour we retain, in this remote Part of the Globe, to the immortal memory of the Glorious King William the Third who was a Branch of the illustrious House of Nassau.” The Trustees promptly accepted the Governor's suggestion.

The immediate acceptance of the name Nassau with the political and ideological overtones given it by Governor Belcher, while it may owe something to the desire to please a generous benefactor or even reflect relief that their handsome new building did not have to bear the somewhat impolite associations of his name, suggests sympathy on the part of the Trustees with the complex of ideas relating to the Glorious Revolution of 1688. This Whig radicalism was a part of the texture of Princeton and “formed the major part of American Revolutionary theory.”84

The minutes of this same meeting copy the deed of gift for the Belcher library and a catalogue of the books. The Governor's library contained about what one would expect a cultivated New England Puritan to have, with perhaps a somewhat more generours representation of English literature, including Milton, Bunyan, Defoe, Dryden, Cowley, Johnson, Watts, Shakespeare, Temple, Addison, Pope, Samuel Butler, the Spectator and the Guardian.85 While in accordance with Governor Belcher’s wish no campus bulding bears his name, it is appropriate that the arms at least of this first of a long line of library benefactors are carved above the entrance of the Harvey S. Firestone Memorial Library and enhance the letterhead of the Friends of the Princeton University Library.

At this landmark in the life of the college, the first years in Nassau Hall, Princeton had almost 1300 volumes in its library; Harvard had more than 5000 at the time of the disastrous fire of 1764, and Yale had more than 2600 in 1742. When that observant visitor of libraries, Ezra Stiles, saw the Harvard library at the 1766 commencement, he estimated a total of 4350 volumes, thanks to a remarkable outpouring of gifts after the fire. By 1783 the Harvard library had doubled.86 That the same rank has been maintained for more than two centuries is not entirely a factor of the relative age of the institutions. The matter is worthy of some inquiry later.

*

After the arrival of President Samuel Davies and the publication of his Catalogue of 1760, the next momentous event for the college and the library was the coming of President John Witherspoon in 1768. He brought with him not only a new vitality in leadership for the college but also substantial contributions of books for the library. One senses his firm hand in the bulletins that began to appear in the newspapers. One such announcement, appearing within months of his arrival, invited “young Gentlemen, who have finished the ordinary Course of Philosophy, to return and pursue their studies at College, and fit themselves for any of the higher Branches to which they shall think proper chiefly to devote their future Application, whether those called learned Professions, Divinity, Law and Physic, or such liberal Accomplishments in general, as fit young Gentlemen for serving their Country in public stations.”87 Astonishingly it was announced that no tuition fees (except for instruction in French) would be charged for this post-baccalaureate independent study. A number of students took advantage of this opportunity, one of them, it will be remembered, being James Madison.

The particular importance of the library in this sort of “graduate” work was recognized, and in sharp contrast to his predecessors, Witherspoon chose to emphasize not the poverty of the library but its quality:

The President will also endeavour to assist every Student by Conversation, according to the main Object, which he shall chuse for his own Studies; and will give Lists and Characters of the principal Writers on any Branch, that Students may accomplish themselves, at the least Expense of Time and Labour. For the attainment of their Ends, a very valuable Addition to the Public Library was brought over with the President; another large Collection of the most standard Books is newly arrived; and a Third is very soon expected from London. So that this College, which had before all the Advantages for Study, that a retired healthful Place could possess, is now well furnished with a valuable Public Library, which will be improved by continual Additions.

While Witherspoon brought with him the lecture method, the promised “conversations” and guidance of students in their use of the library indicate that, at the “graduate” level at least, the great tradition of teaching established by Aaron Burr was not dead.88

The college life of one of these post-baccalaureate students is recorded rather sketchily in the Journal, 1783-85, of Gilbert Tennent Snowden of the Class of 1783.89 It is clear that in spite of the optimism of the official announcement some years before, the library, after the depredations of the Revolutionary period, was no longer adequate. “I brought several valuable setts of books with me,” Snowden writes, “the number of which would have been greater had I not known that several of the students had different authors the perusal of which I had at my option.”

The “continual Additions” promised by President Witherspoon were particularly notable in the philosophical apparatus, quite properly considered a part of the library and generally housed with it in the eighteenth-century American colleges.90 Despite his inferior training in mathematics and science, Witherspoon brought with him from Scotland a recognition of the importance of science, thus reinforcing the influence of the Dissenting Academies at Princeton.91 This new stimulus was almost certainly responsible for the action taken by the Trustees on September 29, 1769:

The Board taking into Consideration the great want of a Philosophical Apparatus for the use of the Students in this College in Nat[ural] Philosophy, of which it has been long destitute. It was now Resolved that Dr. Witherspoon, Mr. Brian, Dr. Shippen, Dr. Redman, Dr. Harris, Mr. Beaty & Mr. Caldwell, or any three of them be a Committee to consult & determine upn such & so many of the Instruments belonging to an Apparatus as may be judged by them to be the most necessary & immediately wanted. And the said Committee are empowered to send their Orders to England for the same as they conveniently can; Provided the amount of the Cost exceed not the sum of 250£ ster[lin]g.92

Thus armed, the new president personally entered into negotiations which would at one stroke put Princeton ahead of its academic competitors for the most elegant and up-to-date scientific apparatus. Of the sciences which revealed the divine order, astronomy was queen, dealing as it did with the stars in their courses, that army of unalterable law. The best available instrument for demonstrating the movement of the planets and their satellites was the orrery. Harvard had been presented one in 1732, made in England, and another had been sent over in 1767 when the first was lost in the fire of 1764. President Clap of Yale had himself made a rather crude orrery in 1743, the first constructed in America. Princeton had none.

This unfortunate situation was remedied when in 1770 Witherspoon persuaded David Rittenhouse to sell Princeton the orrery he was building, much to the chagrin of Dr. William Smith and his associates at the College of Philadelphia, who had to be content with a later version. Rittenhouse was of course the famous clockmaker become scientist, who later succeeded Franklin and preceded Jefferson as President of the American Philosophical Society.93

Installed in the library in Nassau Hall, the Rittenhouse Orrery immediately became the show piece of a growing collection of scientific apparatus.94 In the same year that the orrery arrived the first appointment was made to the Professorship of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, established in 1769 but at first unfilled for lack of funds. The first incumbent was William Churchill Houston of the Class of 1768 who had been a tutor since 1769 and since September 1770, “College librarian and keeper of the Philosophical Apparatus.” It was Professor Houston who acted as host to John Adams when he broke his journey to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia by stopping off in Princeton at the tavern known as the “Hudibras,” which stood just about where the northwest corner of the Firestone Library now stands. After a walk to “Morven,” the eat of Richard Stockton, with a Massachusetts student to whom he had brought a letter, Adams says he

…met Mr. Euston, the Professor of Mathematicks and natural Philosophy, who kindly invited Us to his Chamber. We went. The Colledge is conveniently constructed. Instead of Entries across the Building, the Entries are from End to End, and the Chambers are on each side of the Entries. There are such Entries one above another on every Story. Each Chamber has 3 Windows, two studies, with one Window in each, and one Window between the studies to enlighten the Chamber.

Mr. Euston then shewed us the Library. It is not large, but has some good Books. He then led us into the Apparatus. Here we saw a most beautifull Machine, an Orrery, or Planetarium, constructed by Mr. Writtenhouse of Philadelphia. It exhibits almost every Motion of the astronomical World. The Motions of the Sun and all the Planetts with all their Satellites. The Eclipses of the Sun and Moon &c. He shewed us another orrery, which exhibits the true Inclination of the orbit of each of the Planetts to the Plane of the Ecliptic. He then shewed Us the electrical Apparatus, which is the most compleat and elegant that I have seen. He charged the Bottle and attempted an Experiment, but the state of the Air was not favourable. By this Time the Bell rang for Prayers. We went into the Chappell, the President soon came in, and we attended. The scholars sang as badly as the Presbyterians at New York. After Prayers the President attended us to the Balcony of the Colledge, where We have a Prospect of an Horizon of about 80 Miles Diameter. We went into the President’s House, and drank a Glass of Wine. He is as high a Son of Liberty, as any Man in America….95

Independence and the Revolution, which were to have such an immediately disasterous effect on the college and the library, had been foreshadowed at Princeton long before this conversation of two of the principal actors. At the Commencement in September of 1766 the customary orations took on a patriotic flavor, and most of the seniors made a point of wearing American-made cloth.96 On July 23, 1770, James Madison wrote to his father, “We have no public news but the base conduct of the merchants in New York in breaking through their spirited resolutions not to import, a distinct account of which I suppose will be in the Virginia Gazette before this arrives. Their letter to the merchants in Philadelphia requesting their concurrence was lately burnt by the students of this place in the college yard, all of them appearing in their black gowns and the bell tolling."97 By 1772 the Trustees, reacting to some public criticism of student political activities, found it desirable to require prior clearance of Commencement speeches, the first evidence, I believe, that the students were moving faster toward rebellion than the Trustees.

The campus continued to react promptly as the news of each stage of mounting tension reached Princeton by the coaches driving through Nassau Street on their way between New York and Philadelphia. In 1774 there were various "tea party" escapades, in which the college steward's stock suffered, as well as the property of at least one citizen of the town. While the faculty probably refrained from joining in the bonfires, the burnings in effigy, and the more riotous parts of these demonstrations, they were evidently sympathetic. Both officers and students agreed to abstain from drinking tea.

As is usual in such matters, the Trustees, not being on the campus and exposed daily to the group enthusiasm, did not move quite so fast. Thus, when the faculty selected as Salutatory Orator for the 1774 Commencement one Samuel Leake, who had been particularly visible in these demonstrations and who had used insulting language to one of the Trustees who had interfered, the Trustees rebelled. At their April meeting they cancelled the selection of Mr. Leake and instructed the President to appoint another Salutatorian. The following day, “Some Inconveniences arising from a Law of the Trustees now in Force giving the Tutors Authority equal with the President in all matters of Government,” a committee of the Board was appointed, perhaps significantly not including the President, “to draw up a Rule for the Administration of the internal Government of the College and to determine the Powers of the respective Officers….”98 The travail of empire was being reflected in the first notable tensions among the various elements in the college.

President Witherspoon, although a relative newcomer, soon moved into prominence in the affairs of the colonies. Beginning with membership in the Committee of Correspondence of Somerset County in July of 1774, his writings and his participation in the heated debates of various Provincial meetings resulted in his election on June 21, 1776, as one of the New Jersey delegates to the Continental Congress.99 The Trustees, while at first more conservative, emerged as patriots as the months went by.

One wonders whether the library had any role to play in the heady days before the Revolution. It of course played its part in an educational system that laid the foundation for a spirit of liberty. “It was from the professoriate, the curriculum, and the library that many students pieced together the framework as well as the substance of the religious, social, economic, and political tenets that guided their immediate activities and future careers. Much of the undergraduate curriculum proved most relevant for coping with the exigencies of the Revolution."100 But while the student could go to the library to read John Locke, was the library the place where he became aware of the great debate that was proceeding in the rich pamphlet literature of the period?101 At the 1769 Commencement an honorary degree was given to John Dickinson, along with John Hancock and the more conservative Joseph Galloway.102 Had the students read Dickinson's recently completed Letters from a Pennsylvania Farmer or the earlier pamphlet debate between him and Galloway? Had they read the arguments of James Otis, of Stephen Hopkins, of Daniel Dulaney, and were they to read before the debate ended on July 4 those of Josiah Quincy, or Alexander Hamilton, or Tom Paine? If so, one wonders if they found them in the college library? We would like to think that President Witherspoon or Professor Houston, both to become members of the Continental Congress, would have seen to it that the literature of this great debate -- on both sides of the issue – was made available to the students. I suspect, however, in the absence of evidence, that the role of the college library was not thought of as being quite so contemporary as to include the provision of political tracts.

There were other kinds of libraries on the Princeton campus, however, and soon on most campuses. They were the libraries maintained by the college literary societies which flourished at most American colleges from the 1760s until their decline about the middle of the next century. A historian who has been studying these societies intensively characterizes them: “The student literary societies engrossed more of the interests and activities of the students than any other aspect of college life. Elaborately organized, self-governing youth groups, student literary societies were, in effect, colleges within colleges. They enrolled most of the students, constructed -- and taught -- their own curricula, granted their own diplomas, selected and bought their own books, operated their own libraries, developed and enforced elaborate codes of conduct among their members, and set the personal goals and ideological tone for a majority of the student body. When their operations £altered, the college collapsed.”103

I shall have more to say later about the libraries of the two Princeton societies, the American Whig and the Cliosophic, both founded in the mid-sixties. The earliest record of their library holdings and of the use made of them does not begin until 1813, but we can extrapolate backwards from that later period to con- clude that it was just possible that the “Halls” acquired for their members at least some of the pamphlets preceding Independence and the adoption of the Constitution, as well as the classic works which helped provide the intellectual core of those events. While the societies at Princeton were strongly "literary" in their interests, their concerns were sufficiently political for them to acquire an account of the trial of Aaron Burr and Tom Paine's political works and sufficiently current to include quite up-to-date literary works of the period.

In the meantime the regular college library collections continued to grow, and in spite of increasing political tensions gifts from Britain, or at least Scotland, were not cut off. In February 1773, six Scottish gentlemen “from personal esteem of the Rev^d Dr Witherspoon President of the Colledge of New Jersey, & from conviction that the encouragement & support of said Colledge is of great importance for promoting the interests of religion in North America & for spreading the Gospel among the neighboring Heathen Indians,” jointly pledged from one to ten guineas each to be “employed in purchasing such books of divinity or books useful for young men training up for the ministry, as the library of that Colledge is not provided with.”104 In June of that year the Society in Scotland for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge appropriated an additional £50 "to the College of New Jersey for books."105

These early Witherspoon years seem to have been among other things a period of generally tidying up the college procedures. A college ledger was begun in 1769 (and continued with large gaps until 1839) which gives an account of the overall finances of the college and particularly its investments.106 Unfortunately it does not often record specific expenditures or gifts for the library until almost the end of the century.107 The desire to have orderly procedures was extended to the library, obviously none too soon. One of John Witherspoon's first acts was to have the Trustees appoint on August 18, 1768, Hugh Simm as first Librarian of the college. He served less than a year and was not immediately replaced. Before long, however, it was discovered, as it has been many times since, that even a small library needs attention. The Librarian was missed. “Mr. Sym who was hitherto appointed the College Librarian, having removed sometime ago from hence, and it being now represented that sufficient care is not taken of the books for want of a properly established Librarian who may be answerable for all lost or damaged Books,” something had to be done.108

At their meeting of September 28, 1770, the Trustees addressed themselves to the problem by appointing a new Librarian and specifying in detail what he was to do:

To remedy this inconvenience the Trustees now thought fit to appoint Mr. William Houston to be the College Librarian & keeper of the Philosophical Apparatus; who shall immediately cause all the Books to be collected together & properly arranged, and provide himself with a proper Book in which he shall enter a very exact Catalogue of all the Books belonging to the Library, & shall keep exact and punctual Entries in the same of all the Books that may be taken out & returned by the students who shall be answerable to him for all Books lost or damaged by them respectively. The Librarian shall be at liberty to appoint a Deputy under him for whose conduct he shall himself be responsible to this Board. He shall never allow the Library to be opened for any student to enter in, or any strangers be admitted but in his or his Deputy's presence. He shall also by himself or Deputy be oblig'd to give a regular Attendance twice in every week for the space of one hour for delivering out Books to the students who shall be allowed but one Book at a time.

To make sure that these reforms would be permanent the Trus­tees called for the development of a full set of rules and regula­tions and ordered that the income from the library fee be paid to the Librarian as compensation for the added duties of supervising the library:

And in order to satisfy the said Librarian for his services in keeping the Library and Apparatus it is ordered that the stew­ard do charge in the Quarterly Bills eighteen pence pr. Quarter on every student or resident Graduate belonging to

this College, and that he pay the same unto the said Librarian or his Order. And the President is desired, in conjunction with the Librarian to draw up a set of Rules and regulations for the better management of the Library &c. to be laid before the Trustees at their next Meeting, but which on publication shall be immediately binding on all the students & Residents of the College.

The unusual length of this minute and the obvious thought that lay behind the action taken indicate once again the high impor­tance given by the President and Trustees to the library and its sound management.

The Trustees Minutes, which are not always complete, do not show that any set of rules and regulations was brought back to the Board at this time. Perhaps since the rules were to be im­mediately binding on publication, it was not thought necessary to have them confirmed by the Trustees. If the rules were pub­lished, no copy has survived. The earliest published library regu­lations seem to be those printed as Chapter X of the 1794 Laws of the College of New Jersey, "Of the Library and Librarian."109

The library fee included in the 1770 instructions of the Trustees was not, as might be supposed, an innovation brought over by the new President at the suggestion of his young friend Benjamin Rush, for the Board had already established a library fee five years earlier: "It is ordered for the future, that every student and grad­uate (the officers of the college excepted) who makes use of the publick library shall pay to the steward the sum of two shillings and six pence every quarter of a year to be expended for the use of the library."110 Presumably this useful income was to be spent for the purchase of books, since there were at that time no library salaries to be met. The innovation in 1770 was the use of the fees collected to pay the salary of the Librarian. There must have been some difficulty in collecting the library fee, for in 1772 the Trus­tees again took up the matter and ordered that students pay the fee in advance to the Steward just as other college fees were paid and "that the Steward account for the same to M^r Houston the Librarian."111

Of the remainder of the 1770 regulations one need note only the provision that the library be kept open two hours a week. By 1794 this period had been reduced to one hour. These compara­tively generous hours and the provision for a deputy Librarian, when only three years before there had been no Librarian at all, suggest a certain expansiveness which had come into the Princeton air.

In these years immediately before the Revolution the college was prospering. In 1770 there had been 81 undergraduates en­rolled plus some 25 students in the grammar school. Three years later there were more than 100 undergraduates and as many as 80 grammar school students. President Witherspoon took a special interest in the school, the profits from which were a personal per­quisite, and it had become one of the best in the colonies. The col­lege had almost from the beginning been a national institution rather than a provincial one, and the President wrote with pride in 1772, "There are at this time under my tuition young gentle­men of the first fortune and expectation from almost every prov­ince on the continent as well as several of the West India islands."112 The college finances were by 1775 in better shape than they had ever been, the assets having doubled since Witherspoon arrived. The curriculum had been substantially strengthened, al­though funds were still not adequate to establish but one of the professorships which were contemplated. The library had grown from the fewer than 1300 volumes of the 1760 catalogue to more than 2000 volumes.

A vignette to symbolize the end of this happy period might pic­ture the sturdy back of John Witherspoon as he rode off to Philadelphia at the beginning of September 1774 to see for himself what was happening at the Continental Congress.113 Characteristically, he had to be in the midst of things, even though he was not to take his seat as an elected member of the Congress until June 28, 1776. Becoming more and more involved in revolutionary politics, he had less and less time to give to his teaching and the affairs of the college. The Congress was to come to Princeton soon enough.

The first of the many intrusions upon the college and the li­brary was not an ominous but an optimistic one, for it marked the beginning of self‑government. On August 27,1776, 13 councilmen and 39 assemblymen of New Jersey met in the library room in Nassau Hall as the first legislature of the new state.114 College was in session, but one suspects that the students by this time were not making much use of the library. A month later, at the regular commencement meeting, a few trustees, "seeing no probability of a quorum to do business regularly, on account of the difficulty of public affairs," resolved that an urgent effort should be made to hold a meeting in Princeton on the third Wednesday in Novem­ber.115 But on November 16, Fort Washington was surrendered to General Howe and in the same week General Greene was forced to abandon Fort Lee on the west bank of the Hudson. On Novem­ber 26, Newark was abandoned by the American forces, and the retreat headed ominously toward Princeton. There was to be no November meeting of the Trustees.116 The Minutes of the Sep­tember meeting are followed by this note in another hand: "N.B. The incursions of the enemy into the state & the depredations by the armies prevented this meeting, & indeed all regular business in the College for two or three years."

On November 29, with Washington retreating toward Prince­ton and the British in slow but relentless pursuit, President Witherspoon found it prudent to dismiss the students, having indeed waited until the last possible moment. Three days later Washington's cold, tired troops appeared at the edge of the town. Nassau Hall, along with other suitable buildings in the town, was used for several days to quarter troops. Then on December 7 the pursuing British troops began to take over the town, occupying Nassau Hall, which was used as barracks, hospital, prison, and command post. There they stayed until in one of the flank actions of the Battle of Princeton on January 3, 1777, they were driven out by a brisk attack which included a cannonade by Alexander Hamilton's battery. Having soundly trounced the enemy at Prince­ton and Trenton, it was prudent for Washington to retire toward the hills of Morristown before the full strength of Cornwallis's army could be concentrated against him. Thus Princeton was held after the battle for only a few hours by the Continental forces, then abandoned to the British, who in turn occupied it for a similar period, Washington's strategic position at Morristown making Princeton dangerously exposed. After the enemy's depar­ture, American troops under General Putnam used Nassau Hall as a barracks until the following June, and in October, 1777, the building, derelict as it was by then, became a hospital.117

The Trustees, meeting in Cooper's Ferry, New Jersey, in May, 1777, their first meeting since the hasty one of the preceding September, were eager to assemble the students and get back to the business of education. They requested Dr. Witherspoon "to move the Congress to resolve that troops shall not hereafter be quartered in the College."118 As late as May 1781 they were still protesting the quartering of troops in Nassau Hall, "which is still frequently practised."119

The cost to the college of its place in history was high. Nassau Hall was vandalized, and the little library that had been so eagerly and laboriously built up simply disintegrated. Benjamin Rush, with perhaps some characteristic hyperbole, writing from Prince­ton to Richard Henry Lee four days after the British left on January 3, described the town as ". . . indeed a deserted village. You would think it had been desolated with the plague and an earthquake, as well as with the calamities of war. The College and church are heaps of ruin. All the inhabitants have been plundered…."120 And this was before the years of occupation by the friendly but perhaps equally destructive American forces.

The general condition of Nassau Hall was described somewhat later byAshbel Green:

When the present writer first became a student of the institution, in May 1782, only two of the four stories of Nassau Hall, were at all habitable. These had been imperfectly repaired, but the whole building still exhibited both internally and externally the desolating effects of the war of which, for a time, it had been a sort of central point. The impressions which had been made in the stout walls by a cannonade at the battle of Princeton were still visible on the outside, and some balls that had entered the windows, had left evidence of their efficacy, not yet effaced, in the rendings of the ceilings and partitions of the rooms. The two stories which had received no repairs, exhibited nothing but the floors and walls, stripped of their plaster, which with an accumulation of other filth, lay undisturbed in the place where it had fallen."121

The books in the library were almost all gone. One suspects that they were used by the troops of both armies more often for the starting of fires and for pipe spills than for the study of the classics and theology. There is a touch of regret in the comment of Ser­geant Thomas Sullivan of the British 49th. Regiment of Foot: "Princeton is a compact tho' small town, in which is a good Col­lege, built of stone, sufficient to hold four hundred students; but our army when we lay there spoiled and plundered a good Library that was in it. There was an organ and a nice Chapel in the Col­lege:"122

With the wisdom of hindsight, President Witherspoon must have reflected that it would have been possible as the armies ap­proached to pack up the books and the apparatus and cart them off to some secluded barn. Writing from Philadelphia to his son David, then a tutor at Hampden‑Sidney in Virginia, on March 17, 177 7, to describe how the family property had fared, he says, "I ordered all my books to be put up in boxes & sent to the Country lest the enemy should come that way again but at present we are entertaining hopes that they will not come this way at all."123

The orrery, perhaps because of its fame, fared somewhat better than the books. Although damaged, it was not carried off, as was most of the remainder of the philosophical apparatus. President Samuel Stanhope Smith, who had been a college officer since 1779, wrote later:

The Orrery was very much injured during the revolutionary war. . . . The injuries which it received were comparatively small, from the British soldiery. A guard was set to protect it: and the officers were said to be contemplating its removal to England; this, at least, was the general report and opinion. The principal injury was produced by our own militia, when the college was appropriated as a barrack for them. Many of the wheels were taken off, as handsome curiosities. This, how­ever, was no more than to be expected from a number of ignorant men, so imperfectly disciplined as, at that time, they were.124

We have another eyewitness report from the Chevalier de Chastellux of the staff of General Rochambeau, who on Novem­ber 29, 1780, passed through Princeton, eager to see the battle­fields on which Washington had won his famous victories. "The object of my curiosity," he writes, "though far removed from let­ters, having brought me to the very gate of the college, I dismount­ed to visit for a moment this vast edifice. I was almost immedi­ately joined by Mr. Witherspoon, president of the university…." The President showed the General about Nassau Hall, speaking a kind of French about which his guest noted, "I easily perceived that he had acquired his knowledge of the language from reading rather than conversation." What he saw was discouraging. "This useful establishment has fallen into decline since the war; there were only forty students when I saw it. A fairly extensive collec­tion of books had been gathered; most of these have been scattered. There remains a very beautiful astronomical machine," he writes, but "it was then out of order."</