rkable talent as an orator. His fine face
and soldierly bearing, his rich sympathetic voice and vivid imagination,
made him a favorite speaker at soldiers' reunions and in political
campaigns. Lacking the eccentricities of so many of his third party
associates and never inclined to go to extremes in his radicalism, he
was one of the ablest and, from the standpoint of the Republicans, the
most dangerous of the Greenback leaders. In Congress Weaver won the
respect of his colleagues. Always ready to promote what he believed to
be the interests of the common people and especially of the farmers,
he espoused the cause of the Oklahoma "boomers," who were opposed by
a powerful lobby representing the interests of the "cattle barons." He
declared that, in a choice between bullocks and babies, he would stand
for babies, and he staged a successful filibuster at the close of a
session in order to force the consideration of a bill for the opening of
part of Oklahoma to settlement.

The preliminaries of the campaign of 1880 were vexed by dissension
within the ranks of the Greenbackers. In March the radical faction led
by Pomeroy held a convention in St. Louis which claimed to speak for
ten thousand Greenback clubs and two million voters. After Stephen D.
Dillaye of New York had refused the presidential nomination at the hands
of this convention, it adjourned to meet in Chicago on the 9th of June
the place and time already selected for the regular convention of the
National party. One reason for the attitude of this faction appears to
have been the fear of fusion with the Democrats. The Chicago convention
finally succeeded in absorbing these malcontents, as well as a group of
socialist delegates and representatives of various labor organizations
who asked to be admitted. Dennis Kearney, the notorious sand-lot
agitator of California was made chief sergeant at arms, and Susan B.
Anthony was allowed to give a suffrage speech. The platform differed
from earlier Greenback documents in that it contained no denunciation of
the Resumption Act. That was now a dead issue, for on January 1, 1879,
resumption became an accomplished fact, and the paper currency was worth
its face value in gold. Apart from this the platform was much the same
as that adopted at Toledo in 1878, with the addition of planks favoring
women's suffrage, a graduated income tax, and congressional regulation
of interstate commerce. On the first ballot, General Weaver received