ast for Greenback candidates. Approximately
two-thirds of the strength of the party was in the Middle West and
one-third in the East. That the movement, even in the East, was largely
agrarian, is indicated by the famous argument of Solon Chase, chairman
of the party convention in Maine. "Inflate the currency, and you raise
the price of my steers and at the same time pay the public debt." "Them
steers" gave Chase a prominent place in politics for half a decade. The
most important achievement of the movement at this time was the election
to Congress of fifteen members who were classified as Nationals--six
from the East, six from the Middle West, and three from the South. In
most cases these men secured their election through fusion or through
the failure of one of the old parties to make nominations.

Easily first among the Greenbackers elected to Congress in 1878 was
General James B. Weaver of Iowa. When ten years of age, Weaver had been
taken by his parents to Iowa from Ohio, his native State. In 1854, he
graduated from a law school in Cincinnati, and for some years thereafter
practiced his profession and edited a paper at Bloomfield in Davis
County, Iowa. He enlisted in the army as a private in 1861, displayed
great bravery at the battles of Donelson and Shiloh, and received rapid
promotion to the rank of colonel. At the close of the war he received a
commission as brigadier general by brevet. Weaver ran his first tilt
in state politics in an unsuccessful attempt to obtain the Republican
nomination for lieutenant governor in 1865. Although an ardent advocate
of prohibition and of state regulation of railroads, Weaver remained
loyal to the Republican party during the Granger period and in 1875 was
a formidable candidate for the gubernatorial nomination. It is said that
a majority of the delegates to the convention had been instructed in his
favor, but the railroad and liquor interests succeeded in stampeding
the convention to Samuel J. Kirkwood, the popular war governor. In the
following year Weaver took part in the organization of the Independent
or Greenback party in Iowa and accepted a position on its state
committee. Though resentment at the treatment which he had received from
the Republicans may have influenced him to break the old ties, he was
doubtless sincerely convinced that the Republican party was beyond
redemption and that the only hope for reform lay in the new party
movement.

Weaver was gifted with rema