Known for

• 6th President of Princeton University (1768-1794)

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During 1776

• Delegate for New Jersey

• Age: 53

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Background

• Born: 1723 in Yester, Scotland​

• Education: University of Edinburgh

• Emigrated to New Jersey in 1768 to become president of Princeton University, at the urging of Benjamin Rush and Richard Stockton

• Spouse: Elizabeth Montgomery​ (m. 1748)

• ​Children: 10 (only 5 survived to accompany their parents to America)

• Slaveowning

  • In 1756, while a minister for the Beith parish of the Church of Scotland (Presbyterian), Witherspoon broke with tradition by baptizing an enslaved man named Jamie Montgomery

  • In 1779, while at Princeton, Witherspoon purchased two enslaved people to help him farm the 500-acre estate

  • At the same time, Witherspoon disapproved of the slave trade in theory, saying that it is "unlawful to make inroads upon others, unprovoked, and take away their liberty by no better right than superior power."

  • He also said, "I do not think there lies any necessity on those who found men in a state of slavery, to make them free to their own ruin."

  • In 1790, he chaired a committee to consider the possibility of abolition in New Jersey. The committee report recommended that the state take no action on the issue of abolition — claiming that slavery as an institution was already dying out in New Jersey and would not last beyond 28 years.

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Personal beliefs

• Politics: Patriot/Whig

  • Had long been wary of the British Crown's growing interference in affairs that he thought should be the realm of the American authorities

  • In answer to an objection that the country was not yet ready for independence, according to tradition he replied that it "was not only ripe for the measure, but in danger of rotting for the want of it."

  • The only active clergyman and college president to sign the Declaration of Independence

• Religion: Presbyterian