Dolliver was born in 1858 near Kingwood in Preston County, a Virginia county that would refuse to join the Confederacy and would instead remain in the Union as part of the new state of West Virginia. He attended the public schools and graduated from the West Virginia University at Morgantown in 1876. After studying law, Dolliver was admitted to the bar in 1878, and commenced practice in Fort Dodge, Iowa. He served as city solicitor of Fort Dodge from 1880 to 1887. In 1884, as a twenty-six-year-old, Dolliver received national attention for his skills as an orator, when campaigning around the nation on behalf of the Republican presidential candidate James G. Blaine. A famous political quotation is attributed to Dolliver. Referring to his adopted state's traditional allegiance with the Republican Party, Dolliver said, "Iowa will go Democratic when Hell goes Methodist."
The following month, Iowa U.S. Senator John H. Gear died while in office. Iowa Governor Leslie M. Shaw selected Dolliver to replace Gear. Dolliver was twice re-elected to the Senate by the Iowa General Assembly. In the Senate, he served as chairman of the Committee on Pacific Railroads in the Fifty-seventh through Fifty-ninth Congresses, Committee on Education and Labor in the Fifty-ninth and Sixtieth Congresses, and the Committee on Agriculture and Forestry in the Sixty-first Congress. In the 1908 presidential election, Dolliver's name was again touted as a potential vice-presidential candidate, this time on the ticket with William Howard Taft. As the convention approached Dolliver indicated that he preferred to remain in the Senate. In response to further pressure, he softened his position by indicating that he would not refuse the position if offered it. However, the Convention instead chose James S. Sherman. During Dolliver's service in the Senate, Iowa Republicans were divided between a conservative old guard that had dominated state politics since the Civil War, and a new progressive wing led by Albert B. Cummins, a lawyer and Governor of Iowa. The flash point for this division was Cummins' effort in 1908 to join Dolliver in the Senate by challenging legendary Senator William B. Allison in the Republican primary. Dolliver had a national reputation as a progressive. However, he supported Allison, who ultimately prevailed in the primary but died shortly thereafter, and was succeeded by Cummins. Dolliver soon reconciled with Cummins, and became increasingly aligned with Cummins in his party's progressive wing.
Death and legacy
Dolliver died in office on October 15, 1910. He was interred in Oakland Cemetery in Fort Dodge, Iowa. The small town of Dolliver, Iowa, established on a new railroad line in 1899, and Dolliver Memorial State Park south of Fort Dodge, were named in honor of him. His nephew, James I. Dolliver, represented a similar area in Iowa in the U.S. House from 1945 to 1957.
