#james mccosh

[princetonarchives]

In 1868, James McCosh set sail for America to become president of Princeton. On September 4 of that year, his students at Queen's College in Belfast, Ireland, presented him with a special book of calligraphy to bid him farewell. This is a page from what we might call an "illuminated manuscript" if it had dated from the Medieval period. In this case, some of the decoration appears to have been preprinted.

Office of the President Records (AC117), Box 37.

[waiting-eyez]

The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think.

(James McCosh)

[princetonarchives]

"It is found that those students who most needed exercise, are in the habit of neglecting it almost entirely. This remark will apply to some who stand best in their classes—who are among the hardest students. It has been thought advisable to compel this class, for their own good, to participate regularly in the exercises which they, perhaps, need more than others."

--Princeton president James McCosh, at Opening Exercises, September 14, 1871

[princetonarchives]

"I believe that the attitude of mere professing Christians toward the Jews has not always been so kindly as it should have been. For myself I can say that I never met with any rudeness from Jews…"

--Princeton president James McCosh, in response to a request for comment on antisemitism, in New York's American Hebrew, February 28, 1890

[princetonarchives]

"President McCosh has unearthed a Princeton student, who, under an assumed name, was conducting a correspondence with a lady at school. The young man was arraigned before the Faculty, was reprimanded, and 'advised to go home and repent for having tampered with the affections of a young lady.'"

--Boston Evening Transcript, March 8, 1870

[princetonarchives]

"I have regretted for years past that certain defenders of religion have been injuring the cause which they mean to benefit among educated young men by indiscriminately attacking development, instead of seeking to ascertain what the process is, and turning it to religious use. In so doing, they have acted as injudiciously as those who, in Newton’s day, described the law of gravitation, which he discovered, as atheistic…"

--James McCosh, president of Princeton, in the New York Independent, explaining his position on the theory of evolution, January 24, 1884

[princetonarchives]

"The 'Witherspoon Hall' has just been opened for students of the college, and it is enough to make one wish he were a college boy again. I suspect that President McCosh dreams about it every night."

--Princeton alum Theodore Cuyler (Class of 1841), in the New York Evangelist, April 5, 1877

[princetonarchives]

We believe it would be wrong of us to invite young men of perhaps sixteen years of age to leave their homes and come to colleges hundreds or thousands of miles away, and there leave them entirely to themselves, exposed to temptations, within and beyond our precincts, and at liberty to go to drinking and gambling saloons, to theatres and houses of vice as they please without restraint or even warning or advice.

James McCosh, president of the College of New Jersey (later named Princeton University), April 9, 1884