Selden P. Spencer

American lawyer and politician

Selden Palmer Spencer (September 16, 1862May 16, 1925) was an American lawyer and politician. A Republican, he was a United States Senator from Missouri.

Selden Spencer was born in Erie, Pennsylvania, to Samuel Selden and Eliza Deborah (Palmer) Spenser. He received his basic education in Erie before attending Hopkins School, a college preparatory school in New Haven, Connecticut. Afterward Spencer attended Yale College, where he was an editor of the student newspaper and participated in Lacrosse. He graduated in 1884 with honors, seventh in a class of one hundred fifty. He then moved to St. Louis, Missouri, to attend Washington University School of Law graduating in 1886. Admitted to the bar in 1886, Spencer opened a law practice in St. Louis with future Missouri governor Forrest Donnell while also serving as a professor of medical jurisprudence at the Missouri Medical College. The college later honored him with an honorary M. D. degree in appreciation of his efforts. to fill the remaining two years of Stone's term. In 1920 Selden Spencer won reelection, first by defeating tennis star turned politician Dwight F. Davis in the Republican primary, then Democrat Breckinridge Long by over 121,000 votes in the November general election. While in the Senate, he was chairman of the Committee on Claims (Sixty sixth and Sixty seventh Congresses) and a member of the Committee on Indian Affairs (Sixty seventh Congress) and the Committee on Privileges and Elections (Sixty seventh through Sixty ninth Congresses). Senator Spencer was also noted for being one of the Republicans in opposition to the Treaty of Versailles and America's participation in the League of Nations, working with Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and the Irreconcilables. Senator Spencer made numerous speeches against the treaty while campaigning for fellow Republicans in 1920 and 1922. Senator Selden P. Spencer died at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D. C., on May 16, 1925, following complications from hernia surgery. He is buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis.