Until the 1870 Tennessee Constitution was adopted, the governor did not have veto power over bills passed by the General Assembly. Governor DeWitt Clinton Senter, governor from 1869 to 1871, enacted the first Tennessee gubernatorial veto to preserve the designation of Tennessee’s land-grant university to a single institution—UT. Representatives from Middle and West Tennessee had sought to split the funds among three institutions, one in each grand division of the state. Governor Senter vetoed the bill that arrived on his desk on January 31, 1871, on the grounds that (1) the Constitution of Tennessee forbade the legislature to diminish the powers of any corporation by a special law and that (2) the bill violated a provision of the US Constitution that forbids any state “to pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts.” The attempt by Middle and West Tennessee members of the Tennessee House of Representatives to override the veto failed by five votes.
At a special meeting of the UT Board of Trustees, the administration was authorized and requested to place in Morgan Hall a suitable plaque commemorating Governor Senter’s contributions to the establishment of the College of Agriculture (now Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources). In 2010 a building on White Avenue containing research laboratories was named Senter Hall in recognition of his action.