*Trigger Warning for Offensive Language*
When King first arrived at Dickinson College in the fall of 1854 as an impressionable first-year student with aspirations similar to his elders, his character began to evolve from the time of his first journal entry. As aforementioned, King’s uncle, Charles Collins, was the eleventh president of Dickinson College and served from 1852 to 1860. As the president of Emory and Henry College in the southernmost part of Virginia before his presidency at Dickinson, it is unsurprising that “one of Collins’ old students said that the students generally considered him favorable to the South.”[1] In King’s “Recollections’ of College Life,” King described the mix of young men that made up the student body structure; “most of the boys were from the South and took our politics as we did our religion, from our parents.”[2] One student that undeniably falls into this generalization is William Miller Parsons, a junior at the time of King’s arrival on campus who hailed from Romney, West Virginia.[3] On November 17, 1854, King wrote in a journal entry, “only one recitation today on account of the trial of Parsons for assault and battery on a little n*gger.”[4] Within the 1850-1858 Dickinson College “faculty minutes,” a detailed overview of any of the college’s administrative matters, the sole mention of this case was in relation to Parson’s missed recitation, to which the minutes listed “Parsons excused from making up recitations lost by attending court.”[5] The case of Parsons was handled by the state of Pennsylvania, which found him to be not guilty of the charges of assault and battery.[6] As there was no further investigation into this case by the Dickinson College administration, it was apparent that this behavior was not abnormal, but typical, in the years before the Civil War. In a new environment as a first-year college student, it is understandable why these behaviors of the student body and faculty of Dickinson College influenced King’s opinions and attitudes.
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In congruence with the type of student body and administration that quickly moved past the assault of a black man by William Miller Parsons, King’s lack of respect for black people and his opposition to equal rights is apparent through his actions and the language used in his journal. As King’s attitudes during his college years were admittedly a product of his upbringing and environment, in addition to the rest of the student body, his words give context to life at Dickinson College in the years before the Civil War. Specifically, in one of his entries from the Spring of 1855, King discussed his enjoyment from a night where he, along with his friends, “blacked our faces in negro style, took banjo, flute and bones, and serenaded at Mrs. Ps and Mr. Hamilton’s.”[7] This was a common occurrence during King’s college years and was done in an attempt to entertain fellow white students through the slander of black culture. Furthermore, on the topic of equal rights, the young King disagreed with the views of Beecher, stating in a journal entry on March 24, 1857, that “I could not accord with him in his fanatical views of “Equal Rights” and Pulpit Politics, still all must acknowledge it to be a masterly effusion from the pen of a smart tho’ misguided man.”[8] To once again quote King’s “‘Recollections’ of College Life,” he expressed that in his attendance at Beecher’s lecture, “it took but a few minutes for him [Beecher] to entrance us [his peers] with his natural style, his marvelous eloquence and the remarkable fitness of his incisive arguments and illustrations.”[9] This excerpt from King contextualizes the fact that even though the environment of Dickinson held pro-slavery beliefs, its bright-minded students could create their own opinions on the matter. Two months after he had attended Beecher's lecture, King glued a newspaper clipping above a journal entry from May 12, 1857. This newspaper clipping demonstrated abolitionist views, stating that "the people of free states must be better informed with reference to the real condition of the negro in a state of bondage."[10] It is clear through these two examples that near the end of King’s college experience, his mind had been slightly opened to the possibilities of different perspectives. However, King’s transformation in changing his attitudes was accelerated through his time in the Civil War.
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