james baird weaver
united states congressman
biography
James B. Weaver was born in Dayton Ohio on June 12, 1833, and graduate from the Cincinnati Law School in 1856, beginning to practice at Bloomfield, Iowa. In 1861, he entered the Union Army as a lieutenant and was promoted to colonel for conspicuous gallantry at the battle of Corinth Mississippi in 1862.
After the Civil War, Weaver as a Republican was a district attorney and a federal assessor of internal revenue in Iowa for some years. Transferring his allegiance to the Greenback Party, he was later elected to Congress on its ticket in 1878 and again in 1884 and 1886.
In 1880 he was the Greenback candidate for president, polling about 308,578 votes. He later joined in organizing the People’s Party, which nominated him for the presidency in 1892, when he won 22 electoral votes and a popular suffrage of about one million votes.
After 1895 he lived in Colfax, Iowa and was a mayor of the city for two years. His political philosophy is expounded in A Call to Action.