practice was diverse, and included civil and criminal cases. Senter’s career
included prosecutori-
al work, as state’s attorney in 1904 and 1905, U.S. district attorney for four years between 1893 and 1897, and occasion- ally as attorney for the State of Vermont. The modern attorney general’s office was formed in 1904, and before that time vari- ous attorneys were hired to represent the State, including Senter. The cases give a flavor to the times he lived in. As state’s attorney, he prosecuted James H. Kelley for larceny of two lap rugs, but found his case on appeal reversed, when he had successfully introduced evidence of other larcenies at trial.24
His prosecu-
tion of Ira H. Fiske for publishing informa- tion causing the miscarriage of a pregnant woman was also reversed on appeal, when the high court ruled the charge was insuf- ficient. It should have provided details on how the information was circulated to the public.25
Dr. Fiske lived across the street
from Senter on Winter Street. Senter was successful in appeals of pros- ecutions for killing an antlerless deer, on behalf of the State of Vermont in 1904 for the deportation of a Chinese immigrant, and for the defense of the deputy collector of taxes for the United States, as the U.S. district attorney.26
His Legacy Much of Senter’s correspondence dur-
ing his years in Warren involved his ser- vice as Warren’s superintendent of schools from 1879 to 1882.27
From that office, he
learned enough about the quality of Ver- mont schools to recognize that the system that separated towns into a dozen or more independent districts, each responsible for its own school board, budget, meeting, and teacher, had outlived its useful life. To Senter, through his advocacy for central- izing schools and townwide responsibility for education, we owe the town school dis- trict system as it exists today, established as a reform measure by the legislature in 1892.28
The Convention The Democratic State Convention in July
of 1902 was divided. It could choose its par- ty favorite, Felix W. McKettrick, or endorse Percival Clement, the candidate for the Lo- cal Option party. Clement had sought the Republican nomination, but the party had selected John G. McCullough at its con- vention earlier that year. Although he pub- licly denied it later, Clement was seeking the endorsement of the Democratic Party on a fusion platform that would challenge the established Republican order. At issue was local option, giving towns the right to
www.vtbar.org
vote themselves wet or dry in the sale of alcoholic beverages. Vermont had de jure prohibition since 1852, but it was honored in the breech.29
John H. Senter supported local option, but he was dead set against endorsing Clement. He was too loyal a Democrat to agree to that.30 gan, he stated:
Before the convention be-
If you nominate Clement, then I shall no longer have a party. The democrat- ic party of Vermont will have then dis- appeared. I fought for the democratic party for years, but I have never been asked to surrender the party to the en- emy before. Mr. Clement said at Mont- pelier at the time of the republican convention that he was proud of the republican party. Are you? Do you sup- pose that if you nominate Mr. Clement that he would stand on the platform you have adopted? I guess not. Mr. Clement stands for all the republican party represents. He is as much a part of that corrupt machine, which he criti- cizes, as Gen. McCullough. Let those republicans, who wish to, vote for Clement. Let us preserve the integrity of the democratic party, which stands for more than local option.31
McKettrick was the party’s choice that summer, and John G. McCullough, Repub- lican, was elected governor by the legisla- ture upon failing to attain a majority vote in the face of Clement’s competition. Local option was enacted by the legislature fol- lowing a statewide referendum in 1903.32
Shakespeare
At the October 27, 1903, Annual Meet- ing of the Vermont Bar Association, its president, John H. Senter, gave the tradi- tional address. This was no mere retelling of old stories, but a scholarly treatise en- titled, “Was Shakespeare a Lawyer?” The talk was printed and distributed widely, and today serves as the best single source for hearing Senter’s voice. His paper must have taken more than hour to deliver, and runs fifty-four pages in its printed form, including quotations from a dozen of the plays.33
Senter starts with the challenge to an- swer several historians who suggested that Francis Bacon was the true author of these plays, by parsing out each of the lines from the various plays to see whether they were correct uses of the terms or if they reflect- ed a study of law at all. He faults the Bard in his use of “dower,” confusing it with “dowry” in several plays, and “indenture” and “moiety” in others, finding no lawyer of that time would have made such mis- takes.34
He objected to Shakespeare’s line THE VERMONT BAR JOURNAL • SPRING 2012 9
Ruminations: John H. Senter
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