Early Life and Career
Senter was born in McMinn County, Tennessee, the son of William Tandy Senter and Nancy White. His father was a popular Methodist minister and renowned orator who served in the United States House of Representatives in the mid-1840s, and was a delegate to Tennessee's 1834 constitutional convention. Dewitt grew up in what is now Hamblen County, Tennessee (then part of Grainger County), where he attended public schools. He studied at Strawberry Plains College in nearby Strawberry Plains from 1851 to 1852, and read law for about a year under Judge T.W. Turley.
Senter represented Grainger County in the state House of Representatives from 1855 to 1861. A Whig, he remained staunchly opposed to secession on the eve of the Civil War. In May 1861, he voted against the state's Ordinance of Secession, and canvassed in East Tennessee in an attempt to rally the region's Unionists. He was a member of the Grainger County delegation at the East Tennessee Union Convention, which sought to form a separate, Union-aligned state in East Tennessee. In 1862, Senter was arrested and jailed for several months by Confederate authorities. After his release, he fled to Louisville, Kentucky. He was an elector for the Republican Party ticket in the 1864 presidential election.
In January 1865, Senter was elected to the Tennessee Senate, representing Grainger, Claiborne, Anderson, and Campbell counties, and served as the Senate's Chairman of the Committee on Incorporations. That same year, he became president of the Cincinnati, Cumberland Gap and Charleston Railroad, a position in which he served until 1866. In 1867, the state senate elected him Speaker of the Senate.
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