The journey from there to here

James Weaver (1833-1912) enlisted as a private in the Union Army and fought at Shiloh, and went on following the war to hold post as the District Attorney of Iowa's second judicial district in 1866. In 1867, he was appointed the federal assessor of internal revenue, and quickly became disillusioned with Ulysses S. Grant, and joined the Greenback Party, which had been organized in 1876 around the platform of expansion of paper money. Weaver ran for, and won, a seat in Congress with the party in 1878, and in 1880 was its presidential nominee, gaining 308,578 popular votes in an election that saw the winner, James Garfield, win by fewer than 10,000 popular votes. The Greenback Party began to fall apart, and Weaver helped to establish the Populist Party, who fielded him as their presidential candidate in 1892, when he won 1,041,028 votes and 4 states, one of the best showings of a third party candidate.


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