Madison must have reveled in colonial Princeton. As one biographer phrases it, the college “smoked with rebellion.” One visitor to the campus was perplexed to find that the young men, whom he had expected to be preparing for the ministry, plunged into “discussing . . . the most perplexing political topics.”26 As another Madison biographer put it, “The College of New Jersey in Madison’s day was the seedbed of sedition and nursery of rebels Tory critics charged it with being.”
