A congressman at 29, a senator at 33, and a general during the Mexican War, Franklin Pierce became the Democratic nominee for President in 1852 because he was a pro-slavery Northerner. After winning the Presidency, his actions during the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act effectively ended his career.

Pierce’s role in repealing the compromises of 1820 and 1850 pushed America onto the path to Civil War and often rank him among the worst Presidents in American history.

Nathaniel Hawthorne is remembered today as one of the greatest authors in American literature. His works include The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, The Marble Faun, among others.

A close friend of Franklin Pierce, Hawthorne’s only work of non-fiction was Pierce’s 1852 campaign biography. As reward for helping him win the presidency, Pierce made Hawthorne Consul to Liverpool. He spent most of the 1850’s in England and Italy.

When Hawthorne died in 1864, Pierce was the only one at his deathbed.

William Pitt Fessenden was one of the early founders of the Republican Party, and one of the party’s leading Senators before, during and after the Civil War. A staunch abolitionist, Fessenden dared the South to secede from the Senate floor as early as 1854, and was one of the first national leaders to switch from the Whigs to the Republicans.

Many Republicans urged Fessenden to run for President in 1860, but he refused. During the war, he served as President Lincoln’s second Treasury Secretary. He was succeeded by Hugh McCulloch, class of 1827. Fessenden later co-chaired the Joint Committee on Reconstruction.

Considered one of America’s greatest poets, Henry W. Longfellow was in the same class as Nathaniel Hawthorne. His works include Paul Revere's Ride, The Song of Hiawatha, Evangeline, among others. He was also a celebrated professor at Harvard.

Longfellow was a close friend of William Pitt Fessenden throughout their lives. Fessenden was engaged to Longfellow’s sister, Elizabeth, until she died to tuberculosis. He also introduced Fessenden to another close friend of his, Charles Sumner, in 1841 – a decade before Fessenden and Sumner stood against the Slave Power in the Senate.

John Brown Russwurm was the first black graduate of Bowdoin College and the third black graduate of an American university. A friend of Hawthorne’s at Bowdoin, he went on to found the first black abolitionist newspaper, Freedom’s Journal in 1827. It was the first newspaper to be owned, published and edited solely by African-Americans in American history.

Russwurm later left the United States for Africa and served as Governor of the Maryland section of the African-American colony in Liberia.

A member of the class of 1827 with John P. Hale, Alpheus Felch served as Governor of Michigan from 1846-47 and Senator from Michigan from 1847-53 as a Democrat. After his stint in the Senate, Pierce appointed him lands commissioner in California to Spanish and Mexican land claims after the Mexican War.

A Whig congressman from Mississippi, Seargent Smith Prentiss was widely considered the greatest orator of the 19th Century. President Millard Fillmore considered him the greatest orator in Congress, and Daniel Webster once said that he had “never beheld a speaker” like Prentiss.

A celebrated professor of religion at Bowdoin, Stowe was Valedictorian of Franklin Pierce’s class. He is more remembered as the husband and literary agent of the famous abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin was the best-selling book of the 19th Century. In its first publication in 1852, the book sold 300,000 copies. She wrote the book while living at Bowdoin during her husband’s tenure in 1851. Among the Stowes’ Bowdoin mentees was the Civil War hero Joshua Chamberlain.

A Democratic Congressman from Maine, Jonathan Cilley was seen as a rising star alongside Franklin Pierce and was also a close friend of Nathaniel Hawthorne. But in 1838, a feud that started on the House floor ended up with Cilley’s death in a duel with another Congressman.

Mississippi Senator Jefferson Davis, later the president of the Confederacy, was Franklin Pierce’s closest advisor – serving as his Secretary of War. Because of his friendship with Pierce, Bowdoin gave him an honorary degree during his visit to Maine in 1858. The decision stirred controversy across New England among abolitionists. Bowdoin decided to award the same degree to William Pitt Fessenden – with the two political opponents sharing the stage at Bowdoin’s 1858 commencement.

James Bradbury served Maine in the Senate as a Democrat from 1847-53. Considered a conservative, he often sided with pro-slavery forces and was a strong ally of Franklin Pierce. William Pitt Fessenden replaced Bradbury in 1854.

Hugh McCulloch, a banker from Ohio, was President Abraham Lincoln’s last Treasury Secretary. He replaced William Pitt Fessenden at the end of the Civil War in 1865 and served until 1869. He would return to the same position under President Chester Arthur in 1884.

William George Crosby was Governor of Maine from 1853-1857 during Fessenden’s first Senate term. A Whig who often shared the stage with Fessenden, Crosby was the Whig nominee for Congress in 1838, the term before Fessenden was nominated in 1840.