Bowdoin III was an early benefactor.
Bowdoin began to develop in the 1820s, a decade in which Maine became an independent state as a result of the Missouri Compromise. The college graduated future U.S. President Franklin Pierce and two literary figures, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, both of whom graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1825. Pierce and Hawthorne began an official militia company called the 'Bowdoin Cadets'. The Phi Beta Kappa Society was active at Bowdoin before the Civil War and featured anti-slavery speakers.
From its founding, Bowdoin was known to educate the sons of the political elite and "catered very largely to the wealthy conservative from the state of Maine". During the first half of the 19th century, Bowdoin required of its students a certificate of "good moral character" as well as knowledge of Latin and Ancient Greek, geography, algebra, and the major works of Cicero, Xenophon, Virgil and Homer.
Harriet Beecher Stowe started writing her influential anti-slavery novel, Uncle …
