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James Baird Weaver (June 12, 1833 – February 6, 1912) was a member of the United States House of Representatives and two-time candidate for President of the United States. 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. After serving in the Union Army in the American Civil War, Weaver returned to Iowa and worked for the election of Republican candidates. After several unsuccessful attempts at Republican nominations to various offices, and growing dissatisfied with the conservative wing of the party, in 1877 Weaver switched to the Greenback Party, which supported increasing the money supply and regulating big business. As a Greenbacker with Democratic support, Weaver won election to the House in 1878. The Greenbackers nominated Weaver for president in 1880, but he received only 3.3 percent of the popular vote. After several more attempts at elected office, he was again elected to the House in 1884 and 1886. In Congress, he worked for expansion of the money supply and for the opening of Indian Territory to white settlement. As the Greenback Party fell apart, a new left-wing third party, the Populists, arose. Weaver helped to organize the party and was their nominee for president in 1892. This time he was more successful and gained 8.5 percent of the vote, but still fell far short of victory. The Populists merged with the Democrats by the end of the 19th century, and Weaver went with them, promoting the candidacy of William Jennings Bryan for president in 1896, 1900, and 1908. After serving as mayor of his home town, Colfax, Iowa, Weaver retired from his pursuit of elected office. He died in Iowa in 1912. Most of Weaver's political goals remained unfulfilled at his death, but many came to pass in the following decades. ==Early years== James Baird Weaver was born in Dayton, Ohio on June 12, 1833, the fifth of thirteen children of Abram Weaver and Susan Imlay Weaver. Weaver's father was a farmer, also born in Ohio, and a descendant of Revolutionary War veterans. He married Weaver's mother, a New Jersey native, in 1824. Shortly after Weaver's birth, in 1835, the family moved to a farm nine miles north of Cassopolis, Michigan. In 1842, the family moved again to the Iowa Territory to await the opening of former Sac and Fox land to white settlement the following year. They claimed a homestead along the Chequest Creek in Davis County. Abram Weaver built a house and farmed his new land until 1848, when the family moved to Bloomfield, the county seat. Abram Weaver, a Democrat involved in local politics, was elected clerk of the district court in 1848; he often vied for election to other offices, usually unsuccessfully. Weaver's brother-in-law, Hosea Horn, a Whig, was appointed postmaster the following year, and through him James Weaver secured his first job, delivering mail to neighboring Jefferson County. In 1851, Weaver quit the mail route to read law with Samuel G. McAchran, a local lawyer. Two years later, Weaver interrupted his legal career to accompany another brother-in-law, Dr. Calvin Phelps, on a cattle drive overland from Bloomfield to Sacramento, California. Weaver initially intended to stay and prospect for gold, but instead booked passage on a ship for Panama. He crossed the isthmus, boarded another ship to New York, and returned home to Iowa. Upon his return, Weaver worked briefly as a store clerk before resuming the study of law. He enrolled at the Cincinnati Law School in 1855, where he studied under Bellamy Storer. While in Cincinnati, Weaver began to question his support for the institution of slavery, a change biographers attribute to Storer's influence. After graduating in 1856, Weaver returned to Bloomfield and was admitted to the Iowa bar. By 1857, he broke with the Democratic party of his father to join the growing coalition that opposed the expansion of slavery, which became the Republican Party. Weaver traveled around southern Iowa in 1858, giving speeches on behalf of his new party's candidates. That summer, he married Clarrisa (Clara) Vinson, a schoolteacher from nearby Keosauqua, Iowa, whom he had courted since he returned from Cincinnati. The marriage lasted until Weaver's death in 1912 and the couple had eight children. After the wedding, Weaver started a law firm with Hosea Horn and continued his involvement in Republican politics. He gave several speeches on behalf of Samuel J. Kirkwood for governor in 1859 in a campaign that focused heavily on the slavery debate; although the Republicans lost Weaver's Davis County, Kirkwood narrowly won the election. The next year, Weaver served as a delegate to the state convention and, although not a national delegate, traveled with the Iowa delegation to the 1860 Republican National Convention, where Abraham Lincoln was nominated. Lincoln carried Iowa and won the election, but Southern states responded to the Republican victory by seceding from the Union. By April 1861, the American Civil War had begun. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「James B. Weaver」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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