Letters contaminated with anthrax spores, mailed from Trenton, New Jersey, were sent to various news organizations and government offices. The anthrax ultimately caused the deaths of five people. No one was ever convicted of the mail attack, though the Department of Justice issued a report in 2010 that held government microbiologist Bruce Ivins responsible. Ivins had committed suicide in 2008.
The College of New Jersey (later Princeton University) was founded by seven Presbyterian leaders (Ebenezer Pemberton, Jonathan Dickinson, Aaron Burr Sr., John Pierson, William Smith, Peter Van Brugh Livingston, and William Peartree Smith) when Governor John Hamilton granted a charter for the college. The college’s founders had previously requested a charter from the late Governer Lewis Morris, a conservative Anglican who denied their request based on the group’s religious beliefs.
John Adams estimated that roughly a third of the American population supported the Revolution, a third remained loyal to the Crown, and a third was uncommitted. Recent research suggests that perhaps 20 percent of the population consisted of loyalists. Loyalists were especially strong in New Jersey and South Carolina. After the war, about 80,000 loyalists—including substantial numbers of former slaves—emigrated from the United States to other parts of the British Empire. Loyalists were disproportionately from the ranks of the influential,...
Aaron Burr (1756–1836) was an influential politican and the third vice president of the United States. Though he had a prominent career before his rivalry with Alexander Hamilton, Burr is best remembered for killing Hamilton in a duel in 1804. Burr was born in New Jersey and educated at Princeton (then the College of New Jersey). In 1775 he joined the Continental Army to fight in the Revolutionary War. After the war, Burr practiced law in New York City and in 1784 was elected to the state assembly. He continued his political career in the...
Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804) shaped the financial, political, and legal systems of the young United States. Born in poverty in the Caribbean, Hamilton was sent to New York to receive and education. He was sympathetic to the demands of rebellious colonists and he joined the militia when the Revolution began. In March of 1777 Hamilton was appointed to George Washington’s staff as an aide-de-camp and later distinguished himself at the Battle of Yorktown. He married Elizabeth Schuyler, of the eminent Schuyler family, and went on to serve in...
Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) was born in Virginia but grew up in Augusta, Georgia, where his father was an official of the Southern Presbyterian church. After briefly practicing as a lawyer (he only had two clients, one of whom was his mother), he attended graduate school at Johns Hopkins and taught history and political science at Bryn Mawr, Wesleyan, and Princeton, his alma mater. As Princeton’s president, he developed a reputation as a reformer for trying to eliminate the school’s elitist system of teaching...
![Recens Edita totius Novi Belgii [New Netherland - New York], 1730. (Gilder Lehrm](http://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/aggregate-208x148/content-images/03583_0.jpg "Recens Edita totius Novi Belgii [New Netherland - New York], 1730. (Gilder Lehrman Collection)")