Thirty-seven students graduated from Bowdoin College on September 7, 1825, the College’s twentieth commencement. Among them were future Congressmen, a U.S. Senator, numerous state politicians, the President of the Atlantic and St. Lawrence Railroad, a U.S. Marshall, the uncle by marriage to Emily Dickinson, a fiery, famous abolitionist and temperance minister who was jailed for his beliefs, and two of America’s foremost authors: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Long described as Bowdon’s most famous class, it is easy to forget that at Bowdoin they were just boys learning to navigate the world. This exhibit, in celebration of the class’s 200th anniversary, explores the college days, from academics to pranks, of the illustrious class. Meet the Class of 1825, before they were famous!
WALL: Bowdoin College Class of 1825 Silhouettes
From the Bowdoin College Archives (A01.06).
Before the advent of photography, students often sat for shadow or profile portraits, known as silhouettes, which they exchanged with family and friends. This composite set shows thirty-two of the thirty-seven graduates of the Class of 1825. Not represented are Stephen Longfellow and Horatio Bridge, whose portraits are not known to exist. Copies of the known silhouettes of John S. C. Abbott, Richmond Bradford, and David Shepley are also missing. Also present is Gorham Deane, a member of the class who died weeks before commencement. The authenticity of Hawthorne’s silhouette, signed here “Hath,” has long been contested but has recently been confirmed thanks to the donation of a second copy from the descendants of Jonathan Cilley.
CASE: Bowdoin in the early 1820s
In the early 1820s, Brunswick’s 3,000 residents lived in some 125 homes laid out along 12 Rod Road (today’s Maine Street), the newly developed Federal Street, and a handful of cross streets. “This famous town is one of the most pleasant, delightful, barren and dusty places that I have ever seen,” observed Jonathan Cilley, a member of the Class of 1825.
Cilley and his classmates may have found the town more religiously and racially diverse than they might have expected. In addition to the Congregational church with which the College was affiliated, there were two Baptists churches, one Freewill Baptist church, a Friends meeting house, and at least a handful of Irish-Catholic residents, always identified as such in early town histories. There was a free black population of more than 50 people, the second largest in the state per the 1820 Census, and a Wabanaki family living downtown along with regular Penobscot visitors who returned seasonally to the area, which had been and remained into the 1840s, an important fishing and hunting location.
Bowdoin College, then entering its third decade, was a point of considerable pride for the town of Brunswick, particularly after statehood. The College, which added a medical school in 1820, comprised three buildings on six acres on the outskirts of town. Immediately behind it were two miles of sandy plains where pine, fir, spruce, and blueberries grew in abundance, an area known today as the Bowdoin Pines, which offered recreation and relaxation for Bowdoin students, including Nathaniel Hawthorne who frequently walked in these woods.
A Description of Brunswick, Maine, in letters by a Gentleman from South Carolina, to a friend in that State. Brunswick: 1823.
This absorbing first-hand account of the town from 1820 to 1823 is purportedly written by a “gentleman from South Carolina” corresponding with a friend back home, but is actually by Henry Putnam (1778-1827), a lawyer born in Reading, Massachusetts, graduate of Harvard (A.B. 1802, A.M. 1805), and honorary degree recipient of Bowdoin (1807). Putnam records detailed descriptions of the town’s geography, topography, layout, development, and industry. Of Bowdoin, Putnam wrote:
The Colleges are situated on the upper grade of plains at a little distance, and in a southeast direction from the Congregational meeting house. They are three in number, forming three sides of a square, at suitables intervals from each other. They are on the south side of the turnpike [Bath Road] and the east side of the twelve rod road [Maine Street]; a neat fence encloses them with about six acres of land. A row of flourishing balm gilead trees beautifully borders the square. To the south east, you enter a growth of pitch pine, which forms another semicircle, exhibiting a delightful appearance. This is preserved with scrupulous care, and may be truly called an academic grove, affording a charming walk for students.
Esteria Butler’s Western View of Bowdoin College. Boston: T. Moore’s Lithography, 1839.
Butler, a miniaturist and landscape painter, executed drawings of several academic campuses. In this view of Bowdoin, she shows, from left to right, Massachusetts Hall (built 1799-1802), Winthrop Hall (built 1822), Maine Hall (built 1808 and rebuilt 1822), and the Chapel (1805), a wooden structure that was torn down when the current stone chapel was complete. In the early 1820s, the Chapel also housed the college’s library. Visible behind Maine and Winthrop halls are the Bowdoin pines. Dating from approximately 15 years after the graduation of the Class of 1825, the view is similar but different than what they would have experienced. Most notably, Massachusetts Hall had a coupla until 1830.
Southwest view of Bowdoin College, 1944. From the Bowdoin College Archives.
This image of campus as it appeared around 1823 was derived many times over from J. G. Brown’s painting of campus, now in the collection of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art. The image has been reproduced many times via lithography. This version dates to 1944 when the College celebrated its sesquicentennial. Of particular note in the view are the cupola on Massachusetts Hall which was removed in 1830 and the white house in the distance, current day 79 Federal Street. The house was built circa 1790 and moved to Federal Street in 1821. Colonel David Stanwood was the original owner of the house but financial reverses resulted in his creditors, namely David Dunlap, getting the house in 1823 even though Stanwood had been supplementing his income by renting to Class of 1825 members Alfred Martin and James Ingraham in Spring 1822. After Stanwood lost possession of the house, Colonel Thomas Estabrook seems to have operated it as a boarding house. Among his tenants were other members of the Class of 1825; Alfred Mason boarded here for his junior and senior year, while Frederic Mellen did so his sophomore year.
JEWEL CASE: MAINE HALL BURNS
Around 3:30 p.m. on March 4, 1822, while most students were attending a lecture in Massachusetts Hall, Maine Hall caught fire and burned to the ground. The event was a seminal moment for the Class of 1825 and others affected by it. Students, faculty, townspeople, and other witnesses all wrote detailed accounts of the day’s event and its aftermath.
Many feared the College, then on shaky financial grounds, would not survive. Astonishingly, its operations were hardly interrupted despite the loss of half of its infrastructure. Within two days, the College had issued a public notice in the Portland Gazette stating that “the exercises of the College will proceed as usual,” and thanking the residents of Brunswick for offering temporary housing to the displaced students.
Benjamin Hale, Letter to Mary Caroline King, March 5, 1822. From the Hale-King Family Papers (M081).
According to eyewitness accounts, Benjamin Hale, a tutor of natural philosophy and metaphysics at Bowdoin (1820-1822), was the only person who was able to reach the room where the fire had begun. Hale’s hair and eyebrows were considerably scorched in his efforts to put out the flames. He wrote to his sweetheart the day after the fire to describe his ordeal in detail:
I went to it, with a good deal of difficulty… the flames left their mark upon my eyebrows and lashes…The fire was rapid, though the whole building was not consumed till 6 or 7 in the evening. We soon found that every effort to save it would be unavailing & set ourselves to the preservation of the moveable property.
Fire Buckets from the town of Brunswick’s Washington Fire Company, after 1803. From the Abbott Memorial Collection (M001).
The Washington Fire Company was Brunswick’s earliest known fire company. It was an all volunteer organization and each of its members was required to maintain two fire buckets. These buckets or ones like them would have been used to attempt to extinguish the flames at Maine Hall.
CASE: ROOM
As a fledgling college in the 1820s, Bowdoin struggled to provide adequate housing for its students, a situation exacerbated by the founding of the Medical School of Maine in 1820 and the expanding of class sizes. The Class of 1825 was the largest Bowdoin admitted to date, with 37 graduates and an additional 8 students at points in the four years who did not graduate.
When the Class commenced its studies in October 1821, there was only space for about a third of the students at Maine Hall, the College’s only residential building. The majority of students lived in various rooming houses scattered along Park Row or opted to study remotely, remaining with their families in their hometown and working under a local tutor. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, for example, stayed in Portland for his first year, relying on his new friend and classmate George Washington Pierce (who he met during a campus visit in May 1821) to relay both official and unofficial college happenings.
To address the housing situation, the Governing Board approved the building of “North College,” what would become Winthrop Hall, in spring 1822, to house additional students. Yet, before construction could even begin, disaster struck when Maine Hall burned. It was reconstructed and both dormitories opened in Fall 1823.
Catalogue of the Officers and Students of Bowdoin College and the Medical School of Maine, February, 1822. Brunswick: Printed by Joseph Griffin, 1822.
While dated February 1822, the catalog, then issued biannually, was actually printed (or perhaps reprinted) after the March 4, 1822 burning of Maine Hall. The catalog shows the Class of 1825, then in their second trimester, spread across rooming houses or studying remotely.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Letter to Elizabeth Longfellow, October 12, 1823. From the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Collection (M112).
After spending his first year studying at home and his second year rooming with Reverend Benjamin Titcomb, a Baptist minister who lived at 63 Federal Street (where Harriet Beecher Stowe would live from 1850 to 1852, while writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin), Longfellow was initially excited to land a room in the newly built North College, now known as Winthrop Hall. But by the time he wrote his sister a week into living there, the jubilation had worn off. As a teenager, Longfellow had already developed a refined taste for comfort, and he found his new quarters lacking. Still, he tried to keep a stiff upper lip about it, telling Elizabeth,
“the room is a very good room, although more pleasant for Summer than Winter, as it is in back, not the front of the College, and on that account not so warm. You must not infer from what I have said that I dislike my room. No! far from that! I am very pleased with it. I wish to be disposed to be pleased with every thing which must be mine or which I must have dealings, that is, with every thing that cannot be bettered – to make the best of a bad bargain, – and content myself, that it is not, as it might have been, worse.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s key. From the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Collection (M112).
This key was used by Longfellow when, as a Bowdoin professor, he lived at 25 Federal Street in the 1830s. The key he used as a sophomore while living at 63 Federal Street would undoubtedly have been visually similar.
Jonathan Cilley, Letter to Elizabeth Ann Cilley, May 25, 1824. From the Cilley Family Papers (M354).
Cilley had a close relationship with his sister Elizabeth, and his letters frequently revealed intimate details about his life away at college. During the May break that occurred between the second and third trimester of his Junior year, Cilley reported to Elizabeth on one of the unexpected benefits of staying with a local family: “There are three or four amiable and pleasant girls in the house; the daughter of the Capt. Eliza is the youngest and h_____ and ______. Really I’ve forgotten what I was going to say.”
CASE: BORED
Laws of Bowdoin College, in the State of Maine. Printed by Joseph Griffin, 1824.
The sixty or so Laws of Bowdoin College—regularly updated by the College’s Executive Government and printed in town by Joseph Griffin—prescribed appropriate and expected behavior for the student body with an emphasis on obedience, civility, and discipline. Some students, though, regarded them more as an opportunity for infraction.
By the time Nathaniel Hawthorne received this October 1824 edition his senior year, he was more interested in doodling on, rather than reading, the laws. Even as a first year, he had little regard for them. Writing home a few weeks after arriving, he lamented:
“The Laws of the College are not very strict, and they are not half of them obeyed. Some of them are peculiarly repugnant to my feelings, such as, to get up at sunrise every morning to attend prayers, which law the Students make it a custom to break twice a week. But the worst of all is to be compelled to go to meeting every Sunday, and to hear a red hot Calvinist Sermon from the President, or some other dealer in fire and brimstone.”
Records of the Executive Government, 1821-1831. From the Bowdoin College Archives (A01.07.01).
Together, the President and faculty formed the Executive Government, which meted out accolades and punishments in equal measure. The group’s records document student fines for missing recitations, declamations, and prayers; walking on the Sabbath; playing cards; drinking at local taverns; throwing bonfires and other parties; disturbing the peace; and all sorts of other infractions. Particularly egregious incidents are recorded in narrative form with the name of the culprit underlined. Repeat violators risked rustication–being sent off campus to study under a local clergyman–or worse, suspension.
Hawthorne’s name was among the more commonly recorded. In total, he was fined no fewer than 24 times for breaking the Laws of the College. Longfellow 1, that is, Stephen Longfellow, was also a repeat offender.
Horatio Bridge’s Bowdoin College term bills, May 23, 1823 – September 7, 1825. From the Horatio Bridge Papers (M018).
Bridge, who would rise to the rank of Commodore and serve with distinction in the United States Navy, had a less illustrious career at Bowdoin. He fell in with other troublemakers, especially Hawthorne, and found himself frequently fined by the Executive Government. His term bills, which he collected into a scrapbook in 1882, reflect the monetary cost of his misdeeds and enumerate his infractions. He was charged $0.96 for fines at the close of the term in May 1824, not a small amount given that tuition itself was only $8.00. His response to the punishment? He cut the profile of a face in the bill.
Constitution of the Pot-8-O Club, circa 1824. From the Nathaniel Hawthorne Collection (M085).
Among the more humorous and ephemeral social clubs was the Pot-8-O, established by Hawthorne and a handful of other students, whose constitution states thusly:
We the undersigned subscribers being convinced it is beneficial both to the health and understanding of man, to use vegetable diet [sic], and considering that the Potatoe [sic] is nutritious, easy of digestion, and procured with less difficulty and expense than most other vegetables, do hereby agree to form ourselves into an association. . . This Club shall meet once a week at which time an entertainment shall be provided consisting of roasted potatoes, butter, salt, cider or some other mild drink, but ardent spirits shall never be introduced.
Perhaps the emphasis on the rule that spirits shall never be introduced suggests that it was intended to be broken—some have suggested that this was a dining club characterized more by its drinking than much of anything else.
CASE: LITERARY SOCIETIES
Literary societies were integral to the social fabric of early American colleges, including Bowdoin. These clubs offered their members a chance to congregate, debate, and deliberate on important topics of the day. Bowdoin’s oldest literary society, the Peucinian Society was formed November 22, 1805 as The Philomathian Society, with the avowed purpose of “the attainment in habits of discussion and elocution.” A few months later, the group voted to change its name to something more distinct, adopting Peucinian, the Greek word for “pine-covered,” or Peucinian, and the motto: Pinos loquentes semper habemus (We always have the whispering pines). Within a few years, the Athenaean Society was formed in 1808, purportedly by a disgruntled Peucinian who did not graduate. This new debating and literary society was disbanded in 1811, revived in 1813, disbanded again in 1816 and revived again in 1817.
By the time the Class of 1825 arrived at Bowdoin, both societies were well integrated into the fabric of the campus life with dedicated spaces on the first floor of Maine Hall and extensive libraries purchased by and for the benefit of their own members. The societies competed vigorously for new members, and both groups developed certain reputations on campus; , with the Peucinian Society attracting those with Federalist political leanings while the Athenaean Society appealed to Democrats. Based on academic ranks, it also appears that more serious scholars preferred the Peucinian Society, perhaps because of its larger library and more rigorous meeting schedule.
Peucinian Society Records, 1819-1831. From the Bowdoin College Archives (A04.36.01).
The July 18, 1823 notes of the Peucinian Society record the appointment of a special committee, composed of Thomas Ayer, John Badger, George Barrell Cheever, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and David Shepley, all members of the Class of 1825, to compile and publish a catalog of the Peucinian Society library. Longfellow would employ these same bibliographic skills years later when he became the Librarian of Bowdoin College.
Catalogue of the library of the Peucinian Society, Bowdoin College. Hallowell, Maine: Goodale, Glazier & Co., printers, 1823.
Peucinian Society pin and badge. From the Bowdoin College Archives (A04.36.01).
This badge dates to the early 1820s, and would have been worn by a Peucinian Society member to identify himself as such. The pin, possibly of a later date, belonged to U. S. Congressman Samuel Page Benson, a member of the Class of 1825. Benson retained a far deeper connection to his alma mater than most of his classmates. His affinity for the Peucinian Society brought him back to campus to deliver the group’s commencement oration in 1839. He served as an Overseer for the college between (1839-1876), as the President of the Board (1860-1876), and as the Treasurer General of the Alumni Association (1870-1876). In the latter role, Benson managed to raise $20,000 (approximately $400,000 today when adjusted for inflation) to build Memorial Hall. The congressman was also the mastermind behind the Class of 1825’s 50th reunion. He proposed the idea of an in-person 1875 reunion to the college and then sent letters inviting each surviving class member to Brunswick. He was among the thirteen attendees of that historic Bowdoin event.
Athenaean Society membership requests and responses, 1822. From the Bowdoin College Archives (A04.37).
Preserved in the records of the Athenaean Society are numerous letters from potential members either declining with regret or accepting with enthusiasm the invitation to join the club. Most members of the Class of 1825 who joined seem to have done so in 1822, during their sophomore year. Among those students accepting were Horatio Bridge and Jonathan Cilley, a future U.S. Navy Commodore and Congressman respectively. Declining that year were Cullen Sawtelle, son of a Chief Justice, and Alfred Mason, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s roommate.
List of subscribers to purchase library materials for the Athenaean Society, 1824. From the Bowdoin College Archives (A04.37).
Members of the literary societies used their collective purchasing power to subscribe to important new works of literature, history, and science, among other disciplines. Many members of the Class of 1825, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, the society’s most famous alumnus, pledged their support to buy Gregory’s Dictionary, Nicholson’s Encyclopedia, Middleton’s Cicero, Johnson’s Works, and several other important works from a dealer on October 21, 1824.
ALAMO CASE: ACADEMICS
Like Harvard University on which it was modeled, Bowdoin College offered a rigid classical education to its students. As Chuck Dorn explains in his book For the Common Good: A New History of Higher Education, the leaders of Bowdoin “believed that the college’s course of study fostered students’ ‘mental powers,’ while its residential program inculcated proper behavior–a two pronged approach to nurturing virtue that higher-education institutions throughout New England employed during the early national period.”
To be admitted to the College, applicants had to sit for an admissions examination and demonstrate proficiency in both Greek and Latin, along with an understanding of arithmetic, geography, and classical works such as Cicero’s Selected Orations and Virgil’s Aeneid. They also needed to produce a certification of their good moral character, a prerequisite for identifying students who could work to advance the common good.
Once admitted, all students followed the same curriculum; there were no electives although upperclassmen could attend lectures at the Medical School of Maine, then part of Bowdoin College, for an additional fee. Special Collections & Archives holds a copy of nearly every textbook assigned to the Class of 1825, including some that were Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s personal copies. Perhaps due to the expense of books, faculty structured the curriculum so that many of textbooks were used for two or more years; in the case of the assigned mathematics textbook, Webber’s as it was called, short for Mathematics, compiled from the Best Authors, and Intended to be the Text-Book of the Course of Private Lectures of these Sciences in the University at Cambridge by Samuel Webber, the President of Harvard University, students used this same textbook for all four years.
The books in this case are the actual textbooks assigned to the Class of 1825 and they are arranged in the order in which they were introduced. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s copies are noted as “HWL.” Also on view is one book, Blair’s Lectures, that was owned by Franklin Pierce, President of the United States of America and Bowdoin College Class of 1824, and a close personal friend of Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Cornelis Schrevel’s Lexicon manuale graeco-latinum et latino-graecum, by 1818. Together with: The Holy Bible: containing the Old and New Testament, 1818.
In addition to their assigned textbooks, students routinely had personal copies of reference and other books. The two on view here were owned by Stephen Longfellow, Henry’s older brother and fellow member of the Class of 1825. Stephen was a willful child and caused his parents’ considerable concern. They sent Henry and Stephen to Bowdoin together and in the same class in part so the younger brother could keep an eye on the elder. Still, Stephen managed to routinely land in trouble for throwing parties, skipping class, and introducing alcohol to his classmates. Eventually, Stephen was expelled for four months during his senior year. The many doodles on his Greek-Latin dictionary, acquired during his sophomore year, perhaps speak to his lack of engagement with the academic program.
Horace and Joseph de Jouvency. Q. Horatii Flacci Carmina expurgata. Apud Gulielmum Hilliard, 1806.
This copy of Horace, a required textbook, was used by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow while a student at Bowdoin. It was subsequently passed to at least one other student, Jesse Appleton Nason, a non-graduate of the Class of 1838. There are contemporary markings, drawings, and annotations throughout; some may be in Longfellow’s hand although they have not been definitively identified.
CASE: PAYING FOR BOWDOIN
Despite fees which seem impossibly low to our modern sensibilities, the cost of a Bowdoin education was a challenge to many, perhaps the majority, of the students in the College’s earliest classes. The Class of 1825 was no exception. Many students worked as schoolmasters, running small one-room school houses during extended academic breaks, to help cover their fees. Families, sometimes extended ones, pitched in as the case with Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose uncle paid for his expenses. Some students were fortunate to receive grants from charitable organizations, including Bowdoin’s own Benevolent Society.
Records, Committee of the Benevolent Society, 1816-1827.
From the Bowdoin College Archives (A04.08.02) and Jesse Appleton’s Lectures, delivered at Bowdoin College, and occasional sermons. Brunswick, Maine: Printed by Joseph Griffin, 1822.
The Benevolent Society was formed in 1814 by twenty-nine members who met in the chapel and adopted a constitution for the purpose of assisting “indigent young men of promising talents and of good moral character in procuring an education at this college.” The society was composed of students, notable members of the Brunswick community, and faculty members. A committee of the society, including members of the junior and senior classes, made awards to deserving students with the consent of the Executive Government of the College. Among the group’s major fundraising activities in the early 1820s was a considerable effort to distribute and sell remainder copies of sermons by the deceased Bowdoin College President Rev. Jesse Appleton’s sermons to raise scholarship funds.
Promissory note for John Stephens Cabot Abbott’s Bowdoin expenses, signed by his father, December 16, 1822. From the Abbott Memorial Collection (M001).
Presumably each member of the Bowdoin College class had to show evidence that they or their family would be responsible for expenses incurred while a student. In this case, John S. C. Abbott’s father along with Jotham Stone signed pledging their agreement to cover John’s expenses up to $100.
Record of Term Bills, January 1803-September 1829. From the Bowdoin College Archives (A01.08).
As graduating seniors, the Class of 1825 paid for their diplomas and the commencement dinner, in addition to standard fees, which at the time included not only tuition and room rent, but also charges for cleaning services, printing the term’s catalogue, and someone to ring the bell to call classes to order. Each student was also assessed a general fee for damage to college property, split evenly across all enrolled students, as well as individual damages, such as to their rooms or to library books. In Summer 1825, tuition was $8.00 and a single room was $6.67 and a double was $3.34.
Jonathan Cilley, Letter to Elizabeth Ann Cilley, December 8, 1823. From the Cilley Family Papers (M354).
In addition to the funds provided by the Benevolent Society, many students, including Jonathan Cilley, kept school during academic breaks. Such students were routinely granted one or two additional weeks of leave in order to run these small schools. In this letter home to his sister, Cilley provides a vivid glimpse of what life was like for a country schoolmaster:
I have procured a school and entered upon the duties of a pedagogue this morning. The school is in Topsham Village, about a mile and a quarter from Coll[ege]. There were fifty scholars came to me today and ten or fifteen more will be added to the number in a few days. And a more noisy or rogueish set of little urchins never had existence. I let them have their own way this morning for sometime without saying a word to them. And such a higgley-piggledy, hurly-burly and harum-scarum as there was, you nor nobody else in the world buy myself ever saw or heard of. But pretty soon I put on a dignified s[c]hool master look and with as much authority and importance as I could crows into one world I demanded “Silence,” nodding my head a little as was natural.
CASE: LIFE-LONG CONNECTIONS
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Fanshawe : A Tale. Marsh & Capen, 1828.
Hawthorne published his first novel, Fanshawe, at his own expense and anonymously. It is possible he was working on the novel while a student at Bowdoin, although it did not appear in print until three years after his graduation. The novel is set at the fictional Harley College, which most Hawthrone scholars interpret to be Bowdoin. While the book received positive reviews, it was a commercial failure and Hawthorne attempted to suppress it. He burned his copies and asked others to do the same. As a result, the book is exceedingly rare. Bowdoin’s copy of Fanshawe was donated to the College as the Library’s 500,000th volume.
Horatio Bridge’s Personal Recollections of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Harper & Brothers, 1893.
In 1893, shortly before he passed away at the age of 87, Commodore Horatio Bridge penned his personal recollections of his former classmate, Nathaniel Hawthorne. Bridge’s life, like so many in the Class of 1825, was profoundly shaped by his experience at Bowdoin, and particularly, by the friendships he forged here with Hawthorne as well as Franklin Pierce (Class of 1824). Not only did Bridge write Hawthorne’s biography, he encouraged his literary aspirations and subsidized some of his early publications. Hawthorne, in turn, wrote Pierce’s political biography, contributing to his election as the fourteenth president of the United States of America in 1853. Meanwhile Pierce advocated for and ensured that Bridge received an appointment as the Chief of the Bureau of Provisions for the Navy, a position he held for decades.
According to Bridge’s own memories, their friendship began on a faithful stagecoach ride to Brunswick in the Summer of 1821:
Some old men will recollect the mail-stage formerly plying between Boston and Brunswick (Maine), drawn by four strong, spirited horses, and bowling along at the average speed of ten miles an hour. The exhilarating pace, the smooth roads, and the juxtaposition of the insiders tended, in a high degree, to the promotion of enjoyment and good-fellowship, which might ripen into lasting friendship. Among the passengers in one of these coaches in the summer of 1821 were Franklin Pierce, Jonathan Cilley, Alfred Mason, and Nathaniel Hawthorne–the last-named from Salem, the others from New Hampshire. Pierce had already spent his freshman year at Bowdoin College, which institution his companions were on their way to enter. This chance association was the beginning of a life-long friendship between Pierce, Cilley, and Hawthorne; and it led to Mason and Hawthorne becoming chums [roommates]….A slight acquaintance with Mason led me to call at their rooms, and there I first met Hawthorne. He interested me greatly at once, and a friendship then began which, for the forty-three years of his subsequent life, was never for a moment chilled by indifference nor clouded by doubt.”
Bet between Nathaniel Hawthorne and Jonathan Cilley. November 14, 1824. From the Nathaniel Hawthorne Collection (M085).
At the beginning of their Senior year, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Jonathan Cilley made a bet for a barrel of Madeira wine that Hawthorne would remain unmarried for twelve more years. They asked their mutual friend Horatio Bridge to hold on to the bet, which he faithfully did. He also notified Cilley in writing that he had lost the bet (Hawthorne did not marry his wife Sophia Peabody until 1842). The next year, Hawthorne visited Maine and reconnected with Cilley for the first time in many years. Months later, Cilley was killed in a duel.
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Biographical Sketch of Jonathan Cilley,” in The United States Magazine and Democratic Review v. 3 (1838).
Following Cilley’s death, The Democratic Review commissioned Hawthorne to write a eulogy of his Bowdoin classmate. The copy here was owned by Bowdoin’s Athenaean Society, the literary society which included both Cilley and Hawthorne as members.
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Life of Franklin Pierce. Ticknor, Reed and Fields, 1852.
When Franklin Pierce won his party’s nomination, Hawthorne volunteered, apparently with some reluctance, to write the requisite political biography. After excusing himself as “being so little of a politician that he scarcely feels entitled to call himself a member of any party,” Hawthorne further notes that “If this little biography have any value, it is probably…as the narrative of one who knew the individual of whom he treats, at a period of life when character could be read with undoubting accuracy, and who, consequently, in judging of the movies of his subsequent conduct, has an advantage over much more competent observers, whose knowledge of the man may have commenced at a later date.” Hawthorne’s work was successful at convincing people to vote for Pierce, who won the election in a landslide. To the majority, Pierce was seen as a compromise candidate who would keep the Union together. To many in the North, he was seen as a southern sympathizer who not only kept slavery intact but allowed for its expansion.
In winning the presidency, Pierce defeated another Bowdoin graduate and former classmate, John P. Hale (Bowdoin Class of 1827), who was a member of the anti-slavery Free Soil Party.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Letter to Horatio Bridge, October 13, 1852.
From the Nathaniel Hawthorne Collection (M085).
Writing to Horatio Bridge shortly after the election, Hawthorne remarked “He [Pierce] certainly owes me something; for the biography has cost me hundreds of friends here at the North, who had a purer regard for me than Frank Pierce or any other politician ever gained, and who drop off from me like autumn leaves, in consequence of what I say on the slavery question. But they were my real sentiments, and I do not now regret that they are on record.”
Hawthorne was referring to his discussion in Chapter 6 of Pierce’s position on slavery, which he shared: that is, while the institution was evil, the need to preserve the Union outweighed any moral or other obligation to push for slavery’s end; rather, Hawthorne asserted that over time slavery would simply run its course and die away.
Pierce did reward Hawthorne for his “troubles.” He received the lucrative appointment as Consul of Liverpool, a position that allowed Hawthorne to collect fees on all American shipments going in and out of the city.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Morituri Salutamus,” Bowdoin Orient v. 5, no. 6 (July 14, 1875).
Eleven of the fourteen surviving members of the Class of 1825 gathered for their 50th reunion at Bowdoin in July 1875. While many of the men present had distinguished themselves in their fields, none was more famous than Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, then considered America’s greatest poet. His presence on campus created a stir. When he took the stage to read this poem, an ode to his alma mater prepared for the event, he was met with “vehement and continued applause” according to The Orient.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Letter to David Shepley, August 9, 1875. From the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Collection (M112). Together with Photograph Album of the Class of 1825, ca. 1875. From the Bowdoin College Archives (A01.06).
Following the reunion, the surviving members of the Class of 1825 took some pains to exchange images of one another. A volume from the Bowdoin College Archives labeled “Bowdoin 1825-1875) preserves likenesses of thirteen of the surviving members of the class. In his note to David Shepley, also of the class and an attendee at the reunion, Longfellow notes: “How I wish we had photographs of all the class, as we were when we left college, instead of those melancholy silhouettes.”
COMMENCEMENT
Thirty-seven students graduated in the Class of 1825, the largest class in Bowdoin College’s then twenty-year history. Commencements drew large crowds, not just of family and friends, but from surrounding communities. The Class of 1825 contributed $300 to have musicians come from Boston to entertain the crowd.
While the students gave speeches, ate, and presumably were merry, they also took the opportunity to demonstrate their dislike of the President, William Allen; half of the class refused to attend the reception he threw in their honor. Hawthorne’s disdain was perhaps the greatest. He characterized President Allen as “a short, thick little lump of a man, with no talents, and, as I have been told, no extraordinary learning.” Whatever disrespect they held for President Allen, though, was out-measured by their devotion for the faculty, Professor Parker Cleaveland first among them. Longfellow, in his poem delivered at the 50th reunion of the Class of 1825, expressed this devotion: “Oh, never from the memory of my heart, Your dear, paternal image shall depart.”
Class of 1825 Commencement Program, September 7, 1825. From the Bowdoin College Archives (A01.06).
The Class of 1825’s Commencement was a three-day affair with plenty of celebration but also a fair degree of tragedy. Gorham Deane, who was to graduate second in the class, died on August 11, 1825, three weeks prior to commencement. His place in the program was not reassigned but instead held in his honor, and he was granted his degree posthumously. Presciently, Longfellow changed the topic of his address shortly before commencement, opting to speak on “Our Native Writers,” an area in which he would soon make major contributions.
Tableware used at the dinner following the first Commencement at Bowdoin College, September 4, 1806. From the Bowdoin College Archives (A10).
In addition to the more formal aspects of Commencement, the occasion included a celebratory dinner, paid for by the members of the Class of 1825. The tableware used would have been similar, if not this set, known to be used at Bowdoin’s first commencement in 1806.