John Witherspoon, a Scottish minister, claimed a significant role in the story of American slavery and the early American Collegiate system. He used slavery as the backbone to drive his revolution of higher education in America. With high proportions of slaveholding families, Witherspoon drove Princeton to become one of the most welcoming places in the northern colonies to the sons of planters. For his purpose was to spread the denomination of his Presbyterian communion though American colleges and colonial elite, John Witherspoon would seek to increase the slave inhabitance in the College of New Jersey by creating ties between Princeton and the Southern and Caribbean plantations, to use his wealth of family, Scottish Presbyterians, and Princeton…show more content… During a period of time where Princeton was sought to be a low state institution, Witherspoon envisioned a bright future for the university. Following his first commencement as President of Princeton, Witherspoon departed for the South to raise money and find students to began a comprehensive restructuring of the college. Under Witherspoon, Princeton forged intimate ties to human slavery as many students attending the university came from slave holding families (The Scottish Enlightenment, 49). A man with the means to spread his Presbyterian communion through the lands by any means necessary would believe that this morally right outcome would be justified by the use of immoral means. These immoral means would place African American slaves in chains in Princeton and the rest of the early American colleges. Why would Witherspoon think that it was acceptable to do something as unethical like this one might say? The disregard and common notion that black lives don’t matter was…show more content… John Withersoon’s youngest son, David, became a lawyer and married into wealth in North Carolina. “With that union, David Witherspoon acquired the largest holding of slaves, 113 people, in New Bern, and set himself on the path to becoming chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court (Genealogy of the Witherspoon Family,47).” David Witherspoon’s will distributed slaves and land to his children, and directed that a portion of slaves be portion of dues to pay for his son’s college tuition at Princeton. “Nature versus Nurture” is a psychology term related to whether genetic or the environment most impacts human psychological development. The ideals of slavery are passed down through the environment, the surroundings of a physical system that may interact with the system by exchanging mass, energy, or other properties. In context, the environment holds true to being the driving force that allows slavery to persevere. An ideal can be passed from generation to generation as a universal truth, and in this case, the universal notion was that the bondage of slavery was essential for life and was thus necessary to stay in tact to allow for the continuation of the racist ideals of mindless beating and malicious abuse that would be preserved for generations to