James Ronald Chalmers (11 January 1831-9 April 1898) was a member of the US House of Representatives (D-MS 6) from 4 March 1877 to 29 April 1882 (interrupting John R. Lynch's terms) and from MS-2 from 25 June 1884 to 3 March 1885 (succeeding Van H. Manning and preceding James B. Morgan).
Biography[]
James Ronald Chalmers was born in Halifax County, Virginia in 1831, the son of Joseph W. Chalmers. He became a lawyer in Holly Springs before serving as a district attorney in 1858 and as an ardent states' rights Democratic member of the 1861 secession convention. He rose to the rank of brigadier-general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War, fighting at the Battle of Shiloh, the Kentucky campaign, and in Tennessee. After the war, he served as a state senator from 1875 to 1876 and in the US House of Representatives from 1877 to 1882 and from 1884 to 1885. He later became an independent Democrat with the support of the Republicans and the Greenback Party, but he failed to break up the regular Democrats or the "Solid South". He left politics in 1884 and moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where he died in 1898.