Biography on john witherspoon
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For the Presbyterian minister, clad always in clerical garb, this was not the end, but merely the end of the beginning, of his political career. For six of the next sju years, while still serving as his college’s president and pastor of a church in Princeton, he was a leading member of the Continental församling, where he represented New Jersey and served on 126 committees (more, it appears, than anyone else), including the Board of War.
If his colleagues manifestly respected his intellect and character, so, too, in their own way, did the British. In the summer of 1776, British troops on Long Island burned him in effigy. A New Jersey Loyalist and Anglican minister named Jonathan Odell publicly excoriated him in a poem as “Witherspoon the great”:
I’ve known him to seek the dungeon dark as night
Imprison’d Tories to convert or fight,
Whilst to myself I’ve hummed in dismal tune
I’d rather be a dog than Witherspoon.
Across the ocean, King George and others referred to the war as
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John Witherspoon
1723-1794
Representing New Jersey at the Continental Congress
by Ole Erekson, Engraver, c1876, Library of Congress
| Born: | February 5, 1723 |
| Birthplace: | Gifford, Scotland |
| Education: | Master of Arts, University of Edinburgh; Doctorate of Divinity, University of St. Andrews. (Clergyman, Author, Educator) |
| Work: | President of College of New Jersey, 1768-1792; Delegate to the Continental Congress, 1776-1782; Twice elected to State Legislature of New Jersey. |
| Died: | November 15, 1794 |
John Witherspoon brought some impressive credentials and a measure of public acclaim with him when he joined the colonies in 1768, as president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton).
Born in 1723, he received the finest education available to a bright young gentleman of that era. John attended the preparatory school in Haddington Scotland. He proceeded to Edinburgh where he attained a Master of Arts, then to four years of divinity school. At this point he was
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John Witherspoon and Slavery
Part One: President and Patriot
For now, the John Witherspoon statue stands in its prominent place outside Firestone Library at Princeton University. I say “for now” because some students—including 300 graduate students who signed a petition initiated by graduate students and a faculty member in the Philosophy Department—are adamant that the statue should be removed. At one level the debate is about public symbols and to what degree statues and names memorializing the past must meet all the moral standards of the present. Not surprisingly, some have insisted that Witherspoon has to go, arguing that Princeton’s sixth president was a slave owner who lectured and voted against the abolition of slavery.
Despite listening sessions for faculty, students, staff, and alumni on a proposal to remove or replace the statue, little attention has been given (at least in public) to the actual history. We need to understand why John Witherspoon has been memori