Beckner, William M. (1841–1910)

Unlike his fellow Presbyterians Charles Hodge and Robert L. Dabney, William M. Beckner was neither a well-known seminary professor nor a frequent critic of state-sponsored education. Indeed, historians count him among the most visible advocates of public schooling in late-19th-century Kentucky. Like Dabney, however, he worried about the possibility that his state might someday require all children to attend public schools. Recognizing that not all parents in good conscience could send their children to the state's schools, Beckner crafted a clause in the Bill of Rights of the Kentucky Constitution of 1890 that denied the state the power to mandate public school attendance. He thus dissented from the often-unstated belief, held by many educators and citizens, that all children should be in a common school and anticipated the action taken by Oregon in 1922, when it adopted legislation mandating that nearly all children attend public schools. The Supreme Court of the United States declared Oregon's compulsory public school attendance law unconstitutional in the famous Pierce v. Society of Sisters decision of 1925, 35 years after the adoption of Beckner's unique contribution to American law that protected educational dissenters in Kentucky.

William Morgan Beckner was born in Nicholas County, Kentucky, to Jacob Locke Beckner, a merchant who held slaves and died leaving his family in dire economic straits, and Nancy Lancaster Beckner, who, perhaps owing to her Quaker heritage, opposed slavery. He attended neighborhood schools before enrolling at the Rand and Richeson [Page 85]Academy in Maysville in 1856. His collegiate studies at Centre College were cut short after 5 months because of a lack of funds. Beckner then tutored, taught school, and read law. Though he disliked slavery, his Jeffersonian states' rights sentiment led him to join John Hunt Morgan's Confederate raiders. His military career was short lived, however, as his loyalist mother sent an attorney to Tennessee to persuade him to return to Kentucky, where he apparently “sat out” the remainder of the war.

In 1865, Beckner settled in Winchester, where he oversaw a local academy and opened a law practice. He soon became the first editor of the Clark County Democrat (later the Winchester Democrat), a position from which he advocated local improvements, Democratic Party politics of a progressive stripe, and the cause of popular education. In addition to his law practice and editorial responsibilities, Beckner assumed judicial duties after his election as county judge in 1870. Before the age of 30, he had firmly established himself as a public figure. He was well positioned to become one of the state's most zealous and visible crusaders for common-school reform.

In 1890, Beckner arrived at the Kentucky Constitutional Convention in Frankfort with a firmly established reputation as one of the state's most articulate advocates of popular education. He would live up to his reputation during the 226-day convention. Indeed, 12 pages of the index to convention debates and proceedings of the convention were devoted to referencing Beckner's comments, resolutions, and speeches, most of which dealt with matters related to education.

A delegate from Clark County, Beckner signaled two of his major concerns during the early weeks of the convention. First he offered a resolution indicative of his long-standing commitment to adequate funding for public education and equitable resources for Black and White schools. Beckner then proposed an addition to the Bill of Rights, later known as the Beckner Amendment, that reflected his commitment to freedom of conscience in matters of education. He recommended adding to the section forbidding coercion in religious worship the words “Or send his child or children to any school to which he may be conscientiously opposed.”

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