in hand-to-hand fighting, and fled through an orchard, leaving Mercer there mortally wounded; he died on the 12th in a farmhouse (still standing) on the battlefield. Washington’s main army now came to the assistance of the retreating Americans, and forced the retreat of the other British regiments (the 55th and 40th) to Princeton, where they either surrendered or fled towards New Brunswick. The British losses were heavy and the Americans lost many officers. The bridge was destroyed by the American troops just before the approach of General Alexander Leslie (c. 1740–1794) with reinforcements from Cornwallis. Washington’s flank movement at Trenton and his engagement with the British at Princeton made necessary the withdrawal of the British from West Jersey. In the autumn of 1783 Washington, summoned to Princeton by Congress, then in session there, made his headquarters at Rocky Hill, about 4 m. north of Princeton in Montgomery township, Somerset county, whence on the 2nd of November he issued his farewell address to the army; his headquarters is preserved as a museum. A battle monument in Princeton, designed by MacMonnies and paid for by the Federal Congress, the state of New Jersey and the borough of Princeton, has been projected.
See J. R. Williams, Handbook of Princeton (New York, 1905); J. F. Hageman, History of Princeton and its Institutions (2 vols., Philadelphia, 1879); W. S. Stryker, The Battles of Trenton and Princeton (Boston, 1898); and V. L. Collins, The Continental Congress at Princeton (Princeton, 1908).
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, an American institution of
higher learning in Princeton, New Jersey, until 1896 called officially the college of New Jersey. Its campus consists of 539
acres comprised in three tracts of ground adjoining each other.
The main campus, one of the most beautiful in the country, is
on the south side of Nassau Street, the old country road
between Philadelphia and New York, and is principally contained
in a block of about 225 acres, which on its west side
has an almost continuous row of English collegiate Gothic
buildings: Blair Hall, Stafford Little Hall and the gymnasium.
Nassau Hall, which was built in 1756, nearly destroyed by fire in 1802, rebuilt in 1804, and damaged by fire in 1855, is a squarely built edifice in the Georgian style. Originally housing the whole college, it is familiarly known as North College, in a quadrangle arrangement of which West College, built in 1836, is the only other remainder; the south side having been occupied since 1838 by Clio Hall and Whig Hall, the homes of the two literary societies, founded respectively in 1765 and 1769, and since 1893 housed in white marble buildings of classical type; and East College, having given place to the main building of the University Library (1897), in Oxford Gothic of Longmeadow stone, the gift of Mrs Percy Rivington Pyne. Besides West College, the dormitories are Reunion Hall (1870), commemorating the reconciliation of the Old and New schools of the Presbyterian Church; University Hall (1876), formerly an hotel and now housing on its lower floors the university dining halls for all freshmen and sophomores; Witherspoon Hall (1877), in Victorian Gothic of grey stone trimmed with brown; Edwards Hall (1880), a brown stone Gothic building; Albert B. Dod Hall (1890), a granite limestone-trimmed Italian building; David Brown Hall (1891), granite and Pompeian brick, in Florentine Renaissance; the Pyne Buildings (1896) in half-timbered Chester style; Blair Hall (1897), built in English Collegiate Gothic of white Germantown stone, on the south-western margin of the campus; the Stafford Little Hall (1899 and 1901), in the same style as Blair Hall, and joining it on the south; Seventy-nine Hall (1904), the gift of the class of 1879, another Tudor Gothic building of red brick trimmed with Indiana limestone; and Patton Hall (1906); Campbell Hall (1909), the gift of the class of 1877; and a new group of buildings, chiefly dormitories, occupying the entire north-west corner of the main campus, fronting on Nassau and University Place, three sections of which (two being the gift of Mrs Russell Sage) were completed in IQIO. These buildings are in the same architectural style and if the same materials as Blair and Little Halls. There is accommodation for about 90% of the undergraduates of the university in the campus dormitories, including the new buildings.
The recitation halls are: Dickinson (1870; remodelled in 1876) and McCosh Hall (1907), for the academic department; and the school of science building (1873), a gift of John C. Green, on the north-east corner of the main block of the campus. The Halsted Observatory (1869) and the Observatory of Instruction (1878) are well known for the work done in them by the astronomer Charles Augustus Young (1834–1908); among the laboratories are the biological (1887), the chemical (1891), the civil engineering (1904), the Palmer physical (1908), and, for natural science, Guyot Hall (1909), which also houses the natural science museum. including valuable fossils. There is a museum of historic art (1887) which includes the finds of the Princeton archaeological expedition to Syria, and in Nassau Hall there is a psychological laboratory. There are two auditoriums, the Marquand chapel (1881), the gift of Henry G. Marquand, and Alexander Hall (1892), used for commencement exercises. Also on the campus are the dean’s house (1756), until 1878 the president’s residence; Prospect (1849), bought by the college in 1878, which is the president’s residence; the university offices (1803); and Dodge Hall (1900) and Murray Hall (1879), which are the home of the college Y.M.C.A., the Philadelphian Society, founded in 1825.
The university library is housed in a large building already described, built (1896) on to the Chancellor Green library building (1872), given by John C. Green in memory of his brother Henry Woodhull Green, chancellor of the state of New jersey, and now the reading room and reference library. In 1910 the library had a collection of 257,800 volumes and about 58,000 unbound pamphlets. There are two athletic fields: one, the university, two blocks east of the main campus, and the other, the Brokaw field, in the south-west corner of the main campus; immediately north of the latter are the Brokaw Memorial gateway and building (1892), with a swimming pool, and the university gymnasium (1903). South-east of the Campus is Lake Carnegie, an artificial widening of Millstone River, the gift of Andrew Carnegie; it is used for boating.
A notable feature of the university is its upper-class club-houses. The upper-class clubs have in the social life of Princeton somewhat the place of the Greek letter societies elsewhere. 'There are no fraternities at Princeton: each entering student pledges himself to “have no connexion whatever with any secret society, nor be present at the meetings of any secret society” so long as he is a member of the university, “it being understood that this promise has no reference to the American Whig and Cliosophic Societies.” These two societies, the object of which is particularly to cultivate skill in debate and public speaking, are affiliated with the English department of the faculty.
A peculiarity of the university is its system of student government, which is most markedly developed in the Princeton “honour system” in examinations and written recitations, under which every student signs a pledge on his paper that he has “neither given nor received assistance,” and there is no faculty or monitorial watch over students in examinations; the system is administered by a student committee, to which any dishonesty in examinations is to be reported, and which then investigates the charge, and if it finds it true reports the offender to the faculty for dismissal.
The university in 1910 included an academic department, leading to the degree of A.B., or Litt. B.; the John C. Green school of science (1873), offering courses leading to the degree of B.S. and C.E.; a school of electrical engineering; and a graduate department (1877), with courses leading to master’s and doctor’s degrees. Entrance requirements are largely in accordance with the recommendations of the National Education Association and the college entrance examination board; students entering the academic department must offer Greek if they are candidates for the degree of A.B.; students (not offering Greek for entrance) who concentrate in mathematics or science in junior and senior year are candidates for the B.S. degree, and those who concentrate in other departments during those years, for the Litt. B. degree. The entrance requirements for the B.S. and Litt. B. degree are the same, and they differ from those for the A.B. degree (and agree with those for the C.E. degree) in including more mathematics, i.e. solid geometry and plane trigonometry. The school of electrical engineering is graduate and professional in its scope. The graduate school (1871) is only slightly developed, and this development has been almost entirely since 1900; a bequest of more than $300,000 in 1906 provided for the John R. Thomson Graduate College; and the estate of Isaac Chauncey Wyman (d. 1910), of the class of 1848, valued at about
