James B. Weaver

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James Baird Weaver (June 12, 1833 – February 6, 1912) was an American politician in Iowa who was a member of the United States House of Representatives and two-time candidate for President of the United States. He joined the Republicans, opposed slavery, and served as an officer in the Union army during the Civil War, but after 1876 he switched to the Greenbacks, then the Populists, and finally the Democrats. He trained as a lawyer. Late in his career he served as mayor of Colfax, Iowa. He wrote A Call to Action: An Interpretation of the Great Uprising, Its Source and Causes published in 1892 when he was a Populist Party candidate for the U.S. presidency, he later wrote a history of Jasper County, Iowa. Born in Ohio, he moved to Iowa as a boy when his family claimed a homestead on the frontier. He became politically active as a young man and was an advocate for farmers and laborers. He joined and quit several political parties in the furtherance of the progressive causes in which he believed...

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