page_title: James B. Weaver
section_title: Later years, death, and legacy
hierarchical_section_title: James B. Weaver / Later years, death, and legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: James and Clara Weaver, 1908
context_page_description: James Baird Weaver 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.
context_section_description: The Republican Party's popularity after the victory in the Spanish–American War led Weaver, for the first time, to doubt that populist values would eventually prevail. With the demise of the Populist Party, Weaver became a Democrat and was a delegate to the 1904 Democratic National Convention. He was displeased at the party's nominee, Alton B. Parker, whom he thought "plutocratic", but Weaver supported his unsuccessful campaign nevertheless. He gave serious consideration to running for the House again that year, but decided against it. In 1908, he supported Bryan's third campaign as the Democratic nominee for president, but it, too, was unsuccessful.
  That same year, Weaver and his wife, Clara, celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary, surrounded by six of their children. The Iowa legislature honored him in 1909, and hung a portrait of him in the Iowa State Historical Building. He wrote a history of Jasper County, Iowa, where he lived, which was published in 1912. Weaver planned to campaign on behalf of Democratic candidates that year, but did not have the chance. On February 6 he died of heart failure at his daughter's house after being sick for ten days in Des Moines. After a funeral at the First Methodist Church in Des Moines, Weaver was buried in that city's Woodland Cemetery. The last letter he wrote was an endorsement of Speaker of the House Champ Clark for the Democratic presidential nomination, but he went on to lose the nomination to Woodrow Wilson.
  Many of Iowa's leading statesmen, including Weaver's former adversaries, praised him at his funeral and in the years thereafter. Fusion with the Democrats had brought Populist policy into the mainstream, and several of the policies for which Weaver fought became law after his death, including the direct election of Senators, a graduated income tax, and a monetary policy not based on the gold standard; others, such as public ownership of the railroads and telephone companies, were never enacted. In a 2008 biography, Robert B. Mitchell wrote that "Weaver's legacy cannot be assessed using conventional measures" as much of what he fought for did not come to pass until after his death. Even so, Mitchell credits Weaver for beginning the political effort that led to those changes: "Weaver's most important legacy in national politics is not what he advocated, or how subsequent reforms worked, but his effect on America's continuing political conversation."
caption: James and Clara Weaver in 1908
exif: {}