Page:Historic towns of the middle states (IA historictownsofm02powe).pdf/309

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  • raim Brevard, Pierrepont Edwards, Churchill

Houston, John Henry, John Beatty, James Linn, Frederick Frelinghuysen, Gunning Bedford, Hugh Brackinridge, Philip Freneau, James Madison, Aaron Burr, Henry Lee, Aaron Ogden, Brockholst Livingston, and Wm. Richardson Davie. Those ten years produced twelve Princetonians who sat in the Continental Congress, six who sat in the Constitutional Convention, one President of the United States, one Vice-President, twenty-four members of Congress, three Judges of the Supreme Court, one Secretary of State, one Postmaster-General, three Attorneys-General, and two foreign ministers. It may well be supposed that the clergymen who were their comrades in those days of ferment were, like their great teacher, no opponents of political preaching. The influence of such a body of young men, when young men seized and held the reins, was incalculable.

"We have no public news," writes James Madison from Princeton on July 23, 1770, to his friend, Thomas Martin,


"but the base conduct of the merchants in New York in breaking through their spirited resolutions not to import; a distinct account of which, I suppose, will be in the