Before retiring in 2003, Professor John Murrin spent 30 years
in the Princeton history department, where he specialized in the history
of Colonial and Revolutionary America. Murrin gave a Reunions lecture
to mark the 225th anniversary of the four-plus months the Continental
Congress met in Princeton in 1783, after departing Philadelphia in fear
of Continental Army soldiers who were incensed because they had not been
paid. Murrin spoke in the very room where the Congress met — the
Faculty Room in Nassau Hall — beneath portraits of early Princetonians
who helped build the nation. He talked later to PAW contributor Merrell
Noden '78.
Why did Congress choose Princeton when it left Philadelphia, and
what was life like for the members?
I think the main reason was because the president of Congress was Elias
Boudinot, who grew up in Princeton and was a trustee of the college. [The
members] certainly complained a lot. I think some of them actually stayed
in Nassau Hall; others were invited in by residents of the town. Princeton
didn't have adequate accommodations.
Is it fair to say Princeton was the nation's capital for that time?
I'd say either that it had two capitals — Philadelphia, where
the executive offices still were functioning, and Princeton, where Congress
was meeting — or that it was a nation without a real capital. But
Congress didn't get much of anything done while it was here. For one thing,
they almost couldn't get a quorum to do business. Under the rules of the
Articles of Confederation, you had to have a minimum of seven states,
and each state had to have at least two representatives. ... And for serious
business, like approving a treaty, they needed nine. So any state could
block it.
Did they achieve anything noteworthy?
Well, they ratified a commercial treaty with Sweden. That was in late
July. It took them a month to get a quorum of nine states to do that.
The definitive peace with Britain arrives in early November, and then
they leave a few days later and go to Annapolis, and it takes them a long
time to get a quorum of nine there to ratify the treaty. By then, the
technical deadline for ratifying it has already passed, and Congress is
so broke that it can't afford to hire a courier to carry the ratification
back to Europe, and so they have to borrow the money from France and hire
a British ship to carry the ratification of our independence to Europe.
Why was Princeton so heavily represented in the nation's early political
life?
The Class of 1771 included not just James Madison, but Gunning Bedford
Jr., a delegate to the Constitutional Convention; the journalist and politician
Hugh Henry Brackenridge; and poet and crusading editor Philip Freneau
— among others.
They almost had Alexander Hamilton. The story is that he asked Witherspoon
for junior class standing and Witherspoon wouldn't grant it to him, so
he went to what's now Columbia instead. Aaron Burr Jr. was Madison's Princeton
contemporary [Class of 1772]. Witherspoon is part of the reason [for the
students' Revolutionary fervor]. His students really did admire him, and
he brings the Scottish Enlightenment to Princeton in a way that it hadn't
been there before.
When I taught the Revolution, I used to say that to the outside world
the Constitutional Convention was known as the Philadelphia Convention,
but we know what it really was: the first Princeton Alumni College. There
were more delegates from Princeton than from any two other colleges combined.
Many of them were in critical positions. Madison drew up the Virginia
Plan. William Paterson [1763] drew up the New Jersey plan. Oliver Ellsworth
[1766] of Connecticut, the future chief justice [of the Supreme Court],
was one of those responsible for the Connecticut Compromise. And Bedford
was the one who created the biggest alarm by suggesting that the small
states might turn to foreign powers to get some kind of justice from the
large states.
There is still great debate over whether or not ours is a Christian
nation, and you can find evidence in the writing of the Founding Fathers
to support both sides.
What I think you can say about almost all the Founding Fathers is that
they did not want to have a fight over religion, so they would say inoffensive
things. Washington seems almost always to use a euphemism for God: the
"Great Designer of the Universe" or something like that. He
almost never says "God." ... But he went to church. Benjamin
Franklin was probably more religious in his old age than he was as a young
man, when he was certainly flirting with atheism. He's the one who, in
a critical moment in the Constitutional Convention, moves that they invite
in a clergyman to lead them in prayer. Madison is the one who finally
defeats that by moving to adjourn, even though it was still morning and
they were supposed to have a whole day! But obviously he didn't want to
have a vote on prayer. And there were probably only about four delegates
who were on Franklin's side.
