By: Amanda Pike

Today marks the bicen­ten­nial of the offi­cial dec­la­ra­tion of the War of 1812. While the war itself had lit­tle influ­ence on the daily expe­ri­ences of Prince­ton stu­dents, on occa­sion, these stu­dents would wit­ness sol­diers pass­ing through town on their way to the con­flict. Some of these encoun­ters were detailed in stu­dent cor­re­spon­dence to fam­ily mem­bers, and these let­ters also address the pub­lic sen­ti­ment towards the war and the tumul­tuous polit­i­cal cli­mate that pro­vided its impe­tus. A few exam­ples of these writ­ings are high­lighted below.

The first excerpt is from a let­ter writ­ten by James Mer­cer Gar­nett, Jr., Class of 1814, to his mother, Mary E. Gar­nett of Pittsville, Vir­ginia. Dated June 16, 1812, two days before Pres­i­dent James Madi­son (a fel­low Prince­ton­ian, Class of 1771) offi­cially declared war on Great Britain, Gar­nett wrote his let­ter while trav­el­ing through Wash­ing­ton, D.C. on his way to Prince­ton. Mean­while, Con­gress delib­er­ated Madison’s griev­ances with Eng­land, which included British trade restric­tions with France, British sup­port of indige­nous resis­tance to Amer­i­can expan­sion­ism, impress­ment of Amer­i­can sol­diers in the British Royal Navy, and British seizure of Amer­i­can ships.

As I prob­a­bly shall not have an oppor­tu­nity to write, on the way between here and Prince­ton; I take the oppor­tu­nity while my Father is writ­ing, to let you know we have got so far safe on our journey.…I have not time to say much more now, as we are going to the Cap­pi­tol (sic) in a few min­utes. Tell Uncle Mer­cer that the recruit­ing busi­ness goes on very slowly here; & that in stead (sic) of the 17 thou­sand men that are reported in our neigh­bour­hood to have enlisted; the Sec­re­tary at war says there are only between three and five thou­sand. I fancy all the reports about what the sen­ate have done are false, their doors are still closed; I expect we shall know what they have deter­mined on tomor­row; the gen­eral oppin­ion (sic) about here is that we shall have war, although they say the pub­lic sen­ti­ment seems to be much against it.…
Stu­dent Writ­ings and Cor­re­spon­dence Col­lec­tion (AC334, Box 9)

After sev­eral days of delib­er­a­tion, the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives voted 79 to 49 for a dec­la­ra­tion of war, and the Sen­ate agreed by a vote of 19 to 13. On June 18, 1812, Madi­son signed this mea­sure into law, becom­ing the first U.S. Pres­i­dent to declare war on another nation.

The fol­low­ing excerpt is from a let­ter writ­ten by Wal­ter Kirk­patrick, Class of 1813, to his cousin, Maria Cobb of Mor­ris­town, New Jer­sey dated July 6, 1812. In the let­ter, Kirk­patrick addresses the recent dec­la­ra­tion of war, and the antic­i­pated effect it will have on the col­lege. He writes:

…War is indeed declared, yet it will not have that effect on this insti­tu­tion which you seemed to imag­ine it would have, the prob­a­bil­ity is that we shall con­tinue here as we have done as idle spec­ta­tors of the scene, since no stu­dent is obliged to per­form mil­i­tary duty while he is a mem­ber of col­lege .…Wednes­day last a com­pany of about one hun­dred sol­diers passed through this place on their way to New York — They had with them 12 pieces of can­non, each piece being able to carry a ball of six pounds weight, and men fol­lowed at a con­sid­er­able dis­tance by four very large baggage-wagons guarded by about twenty soldiers…

Under­grad­u­ate Alumni Records (AC104, Box 73)

Sev­eral months later, James Gar­nett writes again to his mother, describ­ing a camp of sol­diers out­side of Princeton:

I received your let­ter of the 15th on last evening; I had just returned from look­ing at a body of sol­diers who were encamped about a mile out of town, on the ground where the cel­e­brated bat­tle of Prince­ton was fought; I got there just as they were about to pitch their tents; after they had encamped sev­eral of the stu­dents and myself got per­mis­sion to go into the camp that we might see how they were fixed — They seemed to live as com­fort­ably as could be expected in march­ing, they slept on straw & there were about 400, in 80 tents; we had a long con­ver­sa­tion with some of them con­cern­ing their fare & one said that they had a plenty of every thing but lib­erty, but nev­er­the­less if he was at home again he’d war­rant that they would not get him to enlist a sec­ond time; as it was, they had to coax, and make him drunk for 8 or 10 days before they got him; a sec­ond told us that he was very much averse to enlist­ing at first, but they per­suaded him that he would be doing great ser­vice to his coun­try & that it was his duty to fight for lib­erty — but let it be as it would he should not have much lib­erty until he got out of the army again; he said for his part he did not expect that more than one fourth of them would ever return, but he never thought much about it, for they all must die some time or other & it did not make much dif­fer­ence whether it was a lit­tle sooner or later.

Stu­dent Writ­ings and Cor­re­spon­dence Col­lec­tion (AC334, Box 9)

Per­haps not sur­pris­ingly, there are few other ref­er­ences to the War of 1812 within our col­lec­tions. How­ever, these brief stu­dent accounts pro­vide insight into broader atti­tudes towards the war, while demon­strat­ing the often curi­ous nature of Prince­ton stu­dents. Any ques­tions related to this mate­r­ial can be directed to .