James B. Weaver, (born June 12, 1833, Dayton, Ohio, U.S.—died Feb. 6, 1912, Des Moines, Iowa), American politician who leaned toward agrarian radicalism; he twice ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. presidency, as the Greenback-Labor candidate (1880) and as the Populist candidate (1892).
Admitted to the bar in 1856, Weaver practiced law in Bloomfield, Iowa, and entered politics, changing affiliation successively from Democrat to Free-Soiler to Republican. He served with distinction in the Civil War (1861–65), enlisting as a private in the Union army and rising through the ranks until he was mustered out with the rank of brevet brigadier general. After the war he antagonized Iowa Republican leaders by his reformist temperament, his Methodist-inspired Prohibitionism, criticism of the railroads, and advocacy of easy money. Deprived of the Republican nomination for Congress (1874) and for governor (1875), Weaver gradually moved into the Greenback-Labor Party, which advocated the continued wide circulation of paper money. As a Greenbacker he served six years in the U.S. House of Representatives (1879–81, 1885–89), though he was defeated for that office in 1882 as well as for the presidency in 1880.
In the 1880s Weaver played a leading role in the evolution of the People’s Party (see Populist Movement), which had succeeded the Farmers’ Alliances as the main advocate of soft money after the Greenback-Labor Party had dissolved. He was the party’s natural choice for president in 1892, when his patriarchal appearance and commanding presence helped him win more than 1,000,000 popular and 22 electoral votes.
In 1896 Weaver exerted his influence to give the Populist presidential nomination to William Jennings Bryan, the Democratic candidate. The Populist merger with the Democrats spelled the effective dissolution of the Populist Party and the waning of Weaver’s political career. He served as a small-town Iowa mayor and local historian in his later years.