Personal Background
Wilson was born in Newark, Ohio. After his father died when James was eleven, James needed to work from an early age, and attended school when work permitted. After serving as a harnessmaker's apprentice, he studied law in Newark alongside future U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Burnham Woods. He was admitted to the bar in 1851 and practiced in Newark from until 1853.
In 1853, he moved to Fairfield, Iowa, where he resumed the practice of law.
Wilson played an important role in the formation of the Iowa Republican Party, and antebellum Iowa government. In 1857, he was a delegate to Iowa's constitutional convention, and served as a Republican in the Iowa House of Representatives that year and in 1859. Elected next to the Iowa Senate, he served in that house until 1861, when he was its president.
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