Dewitt Clinton Senter

Dewitt Clinton Senter (1834–1898) was governor of Tennessee from 1869 to 1871.

Biography

Senter was the son of a Methodist minister and was born in McMinn County, Tennessee. He was admitted to the bar after reading law on his own and passing the examination, a fairly common practice of the era. He was first elected to the state legislature in 1857. He was serving as speaker of the Tennessee State Senate in 1869 when the state legislature elected his predecessor as governor, William G. Brownlow, to the United States Senate (the way U.S. Senators were chosen prior to the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment), elevating him to the governor's office. He was the last Republican (United States) governor to hold office during Tennessee Reconstruction.

Senter's administration occurred during a time when many Tennessee citizens were former Confederates who were yet to have their civil rights restored to them, vastly reducing the size of the electorate from what it was prior to the Civil War. This reduced electorate returned him to office resoundingly later in 1869. The rise of the Ku Klux Klan, which had previously been organized in Pulaski, Tennessee shortly after the end of the war, was the major event of his term, and a major threat to the rights of blacks and others. A new state constitution giving blacks the right to vote was enacted during his term in 1870, but the right was contingent upon the payment of a poll tax, and thus most blacks remained disenfranchised then and for many years to come. Senter did not seek any further election, and lived in relative obscurity after the close of his term.

Centerville, Iowa was named after Dewitt Senter, although the state legislature mistakenly corrected the spelling.^[1]