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Bowdoin CollegeBowdoin College is a small liberal arts college located in the coastal town of Brunswick, Maine. The college was chartered by the legislature of Massachusetts, of which Maine was then a district, in 1794, and was named for former Massachusetts governor James Bowdoin. The first class matriculated in 1802. Although Bowdoin is now non-sectarian, it was initially affiliated with the Congregational Church. At the time of its founding, Bowdoin was the easternmost college in the country -- hence the sun in the college seal. Bowdoin is intimately connected with the American Civil War. Some have said the war began and ended in Brunswick, as Harriet Beecher Stowe started writing Uncle Tom's Cabin while her husband was teaching at Bowdoin, and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, an alumnus and later president of the college, led the 20th Maine Infantry in a heroic defense at Little Round Top at the Battle of Gettysburg and was responsible for receiving the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House in 1865. Union General Oliver Otis Howard was also a Bowdoin graduate. After the war, he served as first director of the Freedmen's Bureau, established to assist former slaves, and was later honored in the naming of Howard University. Several Bowdoin alumni fought for the South, and one honorary Bowdoin degree holder served as president of the Confederacy. Jefferson Davis of was U.S. Secretary of War when Bowdoin honored him in 1858. The college turned aside wartime requests that it revoke Davis's honorary degree. Davis's name and those of other Civil War-era alumni appear on bronze tablets in the college's Memorial Hall. For a time in the late 19th Century, Bowdoin functioned as a small university: besides the college, it operated an engineering school and the Medical School of Maine, whose last class graduated in 1920. In 1970, the institution stopped requiring SAT scores for admission. In 1971, the first coeducational class matriculated. Just a few years ago the school received national recognition for converting the long-standing fraternities system to "the social house system," under which incoming freshmen are automatically assigned a house affiliation. Roughly 1600 students attend Bowdoin College, nestled in the pine trees of Maine. They study hard during the week and on the weekends enjoy supporting Bowdoin athletic teams, especially against rivals Bates College and Colby College. Activist groups are beginning to gain momentum in light of the rapidly changing world situation, and publications such as Ritalin, a controversial humor magazine; Naked, an opinion/literature mag; and the Disorient and the Patriot, respectively the liberal and conservative newspapers, are reflections of the ever-broadening student perspective. The Bowdoin Orient is the main student newspaper and is the largest one on campus; it claims to be the "oldest continuously published college weekly in the United States." Brunswick doesn't offer a bustling night life for students under 21, but the larger city of Portland is just a half hour away. The Bowdoin Dining Services has a high reputation, and was rated the best college food service in the country by the Princeton Review in 2003. Bowdoin has also regularly appeared among the annual listings of top-10 national liberal-arts colleges compiled by U.S. News and World Report magazine. Among several well-rated departments, Government, Economics, Biology and Environmental Studies stand out as excellent. Distinguished Graduates Government - William P. Fessenden 1823, congressman (1841-43) and senator (1854-64, 1865-69) from New Hampshire; Secretary of the Treasury under President Abraham Lincoln (1864-65)
- Franklin Pierce 1824, congressman (1833-37) and senator (1837-42) from New Hampshire; 14th President of the United States (1853-57); namesake of Franklin Pierce College in New Hampshire
- Horatio Bridge 1825, commodore in the US Navy; chief of the Naval Bureau of Provisions & Clothing (1854-1869)
- Alpheus Felch 1827, Michigan governor (1846-47), senator from Michigan (1847-1853), and professor at the University of Michigan Law School
- John P. Hale 1827, congressman (1843-45) and senator (1847-53) from New Hampshire; ran against Franklin Pierce 1824 as the Free Soil Party candidate for President (1852)
- Hugh McCulloch 1827, Secretary of the Treasury under Presidents Abraham Lincoln (1865), Andrew Johnson (1865-69) and Chester Arthur (1884-85)
- Samuel C. Fessenden 1834, congressman from Maine (1861-63)
- Lorenzo De Medici Sweat 1837, congressman from Maine (1863-65)
- T.A.D. Fessenden 1845, congressman from Maine (1862-63)
- Oliver Otis Howard 1850, Civil War general, commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau (1865-72), and founder and president of Howard University (1869-74)
- William P. Frye 1850, congressman (1871-81) and senator (1881-1911) from Maine
- Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain 1852, Bowdoin College professor (1855-62), Civil War hero, Maine governor (1866-69), and president of Bowdoin College (1871-83)
- Melville Weston Fuller 1853, 8th Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court (1888-1910)
- William Drew Washburn 1854, congressman (1879-85) and senator (1889-95) from Minnesota
- Thomas Brackett Reed 1860, congressman from Maine (1877-99); Speaker of the House (1889-91, 1895-99)
- Wallace H. White, Jr. 1899, congressman (1916-31) and senator (1931-49) from Maine; Senate Minority Leader (1944-47); Senate Majority Leader (1947-49)
- Harold H. Burton 1909, senator from Ohio (1941-45); Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court (1945-1958)
- Ralph Owen Brewster 1909, Maine governor (1925-29); congressman (1935-41) and senator (1941-53) from Maine
- Paul Douglas 1913, professor of economics at the University of Chicago (1920-42) and senator from Illinois (1949-67)
- Horace A. Hildreth 1925, Maine governor (1944-48), US Ambassador to Pakistan (1953-57), and president of Bucknell University (1957-67)
- Joseph Fisher 1935, congressman from Virginia (1975-81)
- George J. Mitchell 1954, senator from Maine (1982-95); Senate Majority Leader (1989-95); chairman of the Walt Disney Corporation (2004-present)
- Thomas R. Pickering 1953, US Ambassador to Jordan (1974-78), Nigeria (1981-83), El Salvador (1983-85), Israel (1985-88), the United Nations (1989-92), India (1992-93), and Russia (1993-96)
- William Cohen 1962, congressman (1972-78) and senator (1978-97) from Maine; Secretary of Defense under President William Jefferson Clinton (1997-2001)
- Thomas H. Allen 1967, congressman from Maine (1996-present)
- Christopher R. Hill 1974, US Ambassador to Macedonia (1996-99), Poland (2000-2004), and South Korea (2004-present)
- Lawrence Lindsey 1976, economic adviser to President George W. Bush (2001-2002)
- Thomas Andrews 1976, congressman from Maine (1991-1995)
Arts & Letters - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1825, world-renowned poet; professor at Bowdoin College (1829-31) and Harvard University (1831-54)
- Nathaniel Hawthorne 1825, author, most notably of The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The House of the Seven Gables (1851)
- John Stevens Cabot Abbott 1825, biographer, most notably of Napoleon Bonaparte (1855)
- Ezra Abbot 1840, influential biblical scholar and professor at the Harvard Divinity School (1872-1884)
- Robert P.T. Coffin 1915, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, author and Bowdoin College professor
- Hodding Carter 1927, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author
- H. Richard Hornberger 1945, doctor and author, most notably of M*A*S*H (1968)
Science & Medicine Athletics Business Academia Honorary - Jefferson Davis LL.D. 1859, senator from Mississippi (1847-53, 1857-61), Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce (1853-1857), and president of the Confederate States of America (1861-65)
- Robert Frost Litt.D. 1926, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and professor at Amherst College (1916-38)
- Harlan Fiske Stone LL.D. 1944, Attorney General under President Calvin Coolidge (1924-25); Associate (1925-41) and Chief (1941-46) Justice of the Supreme Court
- N.C. Wyeth A.M. 1945, American artist and illustrator
- Margaret Chase Smith LL.D. 1952, representative (1940-49) and senator (1949-73) from Maine
- Edmund Muskie LL.D. 1957, Maine governor (1954-58); senator from Maine (1958-1980); Secretary of State under President James Carter (1980-81)
- Edward W. Brooke LL.D. 1969, senator from Massachusetts (1967-79)
- Andrew Wyeth D.F.A. 1970, American artist
- Olympia Snowe LL.D. 1983, representative (1979-94) and senator (1994-present) from Maine
- George H.W. Bush LL.D. 1982, 43rd Vice President (1981-89) and 41st President of the United States (1989-1993)
- Maya Angelou, Litt.D. 1987, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and author
- Ken Burns L.H.D. 1991, director of documentaries on the American Civil War (1990), baseball (1994) and jazz (2001)
- Cornel West L.H.D. 1999, professor at Yale University, Harvard University and Princeton University
- Paul M. Simon LL.D. 2001, congressman (1975-85) and senator (1985-97) from Illinois
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