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This spring, to commemorate America’s semiquincentennial and the Battle of Princeton, Princeton University Library is displaying its collection of Revolutionary War artifacts and stories.

“Nursery of Rebellion: Princeton and the American Revolution” will feature items that connect Princeton and the surrounding community to the Revolutionary War era. The exhibit will open April 15 at the Ellen and Leonard Milberg Gallery at Princeton University’s Firestone Library and will run through July 12.

In addition to copies of the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, visitors can experience other artifacts from the era. Among the prominent items on display is a signed copy of enslaved poet Phillis Wheatley’s book “Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral.” She is considered to be the first African American author of a published book.

Gabriel Swift, librarian for early American collections at Princeton University Library, said the book, which was published in London, had to go into the stationers’ register.

“This is the equivalent of copyrights,” he said. “We have the attestation of Phillis Wheatley, her hand signing the so-called copyright page showing that, ‘Yes, I wrote this book.’”

Other artifacts include an invitation to celebrate the victory at Yorktown, Virginia, which was printed on the back of a playing card. Also on display is a cannonball, roughly 10 pounds and a little larger than a baseball, which was reportedly dug up in 1896 near the Princeton battlefield.

Michael Blaakman, associate history professor at the university, said in addition to making the artifacts available for the public, he and Swift wanted to share Princeton-specific stories of the revolution.

“Especially stories of how people experience the revolution,” he noted. “Not just as a moment of political promise or a set of ideas or abstract theories about liberty and freedom in the future, but first and foremost as a war that had really serious consequences for their lives.”

Planning the exhibit began as early as 2022, Blaakman said. Though Princeton University’s collection is extensive, the university still had to source artifacts from other institutions to spotlight Princeton’s place in the revolution. The university reached out to the National Archives, New Jersey State Archives and Princeton Historical Society to seek artifacts.

A separate exhibit commemorating the nation’s independence called “Real and Remembered: Princetonians Caught Between Study and Revolution” will be on display at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library from May 2026 through April 2027.

That exhibit highlights how the university, whose formation as the College of New Jersey predated America’s independence declaration, became a center of revolutionary thought and youthful activism after the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act in 1765.