Jeremiah Haralson listened as the ex-Confederate accused him of forgery. It was Feb. 13, 1877, and Haralson, a congressman from Selma, had testified to a U.S. Senate subcommittee about the violence and fraud that cost him his re-election to Congress from Alabama's Black Belt.

Malcolm Graham, on hand to represent the state Democratic Party, dismissed Haralson's descriptions of racial terror with a cynical languor. Local Democratic leaders told him no such intimidation occurred, and these cursory denials satisfied the former Confederate congressman.

So Graham tried to make Haralson the criminal. During questioning, Graham asked Haralson about the testimony of another witness who claimed that Haralson had forged an election ticket to get votes in Lowndes County.

“He said there were 163 votes cast for you there, and that there would not have been one if the voters had not been imposed upon by a counterfeit ticket you had circulated there,” Graham said.

Haralson could recite precinct names and vote totals from memory. Lowndes County was not strong for him. That was true. But people there knew Haralson: The son of a prominent Lowndes County planter once held him in bondage.

“I have a few personal friends in the county, you know, old man,” the former slave told the former defender of slavery. “There are a good many there that know me, and they vote for me on personal grounds.”

This was Jeremiah Haralson: blunt, fearless and independent. A kinder country would have embraced him as everything America dreams of. A survivor of the physical and spiritual torture of the nation’s gravest sin, Haralson had the bravery to defy his former tormentors, teaching himself how to read and write and using his natural gifts to go from chattel slavery to the halls of Congress in a little over a decade. Haralson completed his term in Congress a month before his 31st birthday.

His confrontation with Malcolm Graham should have been an early moment of triumph in a long, courageous political career. But Haralson was a black man, and his success placed him in danger. It inspired the envy of venal men who resorted to corruption and violence to end a brief experiment with multiracial democracy and finish Haralson's public life, which would have thrived in a just nation. He was the last African-American elected to Congress from Alabama until 1992.

Nearly 20 years after his exchange with Graham on that February day, Haralson walked into a prison in upstate New York, and out of history.

He vanished from newspaper accounts and official records. His grave, if it exists, is unknown.

Haralson's official congressional biography says wild animals killed him in Colorado in 1916. But research by the Montgomery Advertiser raises questions about the story, and uncovered a trial that provides the last known evidence of Haralson on the face of the Earth.

Fierce independence and a blunt attitude helped Haralson achieve success

Sold at least once as a child, Haralson learned to read and write when he was 19 years old. An orator with a "ringing voice," he served five years in the Alabama Legislature, helping build and expand the state's public education system while fighting for civil rights. He crossed paths with presidents, senators and generals. Allies cheered his agility in debate; enemies who viciously attacked Haralson in crude and racist terms learned not to underestimate his intelligence.

Sold at least once as a child, Haralson taught himself to read and write when he was 19 years old.

But Haralson was no somber crusader for right. He coupled his serious aims with a well-developed sense of irony. Frederick Douglass, who heard Haralson speak in New Orleans in 1872, wrote shortly after that Haralson was “a man of real solid sense" who had “humor enough in him to supply a half dozen circus clowns.” During his 1877 Senate testimony, Graham asked the congressman whether a local activist was a Democrat. Haralson replied: “He is dead now. He is not anything.”

He could confront contemporary racism with exceptional bravery. In an 1876 campaign speech in Alabama, Haralson mocked white assumptions about black sexuality. He said he would never marry a white woman, because “no rich white woman would have him, and he would not marry a poor white woman.”

The Alabama State Senate in 1872. Jeremiah Haralson is at the right end of the third row from the bottom, holding a top hat. Alabama Department of Archives and History

Haralson was also complicated. He happily attacked fellow Republicans in the short-sighted factional wars that destroyed the Alabama GOP in the 1870s. Hoping to hold the votes of white Republicans, Haralson opposed the integration of public schools, a stand that put him at odds with most African-Americans. Haralson also made an ill-advised political race in 1884 that may have ended up hurting a Republican incumbent.

Taken whole, Haralson’s life shows the opportunities available to talented African-American politicians after the Civil War; the difficult choices they faced, and the violent and fraudulent manner in which whites took power from them.

Twice a piece of merchandise to white slaveholders

Haralson's early life is not well documented, but he left a brief outline of it in an 1875 congressional biography. He was born in slavery in Muscogee County, Georgia, just outside Columbus, on April 1, 1846, and remained enslaved until he was 19 years old.

His parents were born in Georgia, but nothing else is known about them. In his 1875 biography, Haralson identified his first owner as John Walker, a person who cannot be identified with any certainty.

Muscogee was part of the Chattahoochee Valley, encompassing portions of western Georgia and eastern Alabama. Cotton dominated the local economy, and slave ownership was higher than normal in the region. Historian Anthony Gene Carey writes that 45 percent of the population was enslaved, and 45 percent of white families in the region owned slaves, compared to about 25 percent throughout the South. In many cases, the value of the human beings held against their will exceeded local land prices. Sales of enslaved people were lucrative; Columbus in the late 1850s supported three large slave-trading firms.

John Walker died sometime before Haralson was 12. The young child became merchandise. Haralson wrote in his 1875 biography that he was “sold on the auction block in the city of Columbus and bought by J.W. Thomson.” This was likely John W. Thompson, a planter who (according to the 1850 census) held 27 people in bondage, including 11 children aged 11 or younger.

It is impossible to say if Haralson's family was sold with him; if they were separated on the auction block, or if he had already been taken from them. In any circumstance, the experience would have been horrific. Jacob Stroyer, born a slave on a South Carolina plantation, saw his two sisters sold from the plantation to settle debts incurred by the deceased property owner.

“When the day came for them to leave, some, who seemed to have been willing to go at first, refused, and were handcuffed together and guarded on their way to the cars by white men,” Stroyer later wrote. “The women and children were driven to the depot in crowds, like so many cattle, and the sight of them caused great excitement among master’s negroes. Imagine a mass of uneducated people shedding tears and yelling at the tops of their voices in anguish and grief.”

Physical abuse accompanied the emotional trauma. Men, women, and children were pressed into the backbreaking work of cotton picking; Haralson was described as a field hand in an 1876 newspaper article, though he left no direct testimony on this point. When U.S. District Judge Richard Busteed nominated Haralson for Congress in 1874, he said that Haralson “bore on his person the marks of the whip and shackles.” An 1876 newspaper claimed that there were “scars on every square inch of the back of Jere Haralson.”

Show caption Hide caption Slaveowners listed the men, women and children they held in bondage on the 1850 and 1860 Census. On July 6, 1860, Jonathan Haralson, a Selma... Slaveowners listed the men, women and children they held in bondage on the 1850 and 1860 Census. On July 6, 1860, Jonathan Haralson, a Selma attorney, reported holding 13 people in bondage. Line 31 lists a 14-year-old black male; this was likely Jeremiah Haralson. U.S. Census Bureau via ancestry.com

When Thompson died in 1858, Jeremiah passed into the hands of Jonathan Haralson, the college-educated son of a wealthy planter in Lowndes County. A lawyer in Selma, Haralson had married Thompson’s daughter Mattie. He later became an Alabama Supreme Court justice. Haralson appears to have inherited Jeremiah after Thompson’s death, and took him from Columbus to Selma.

The 1860 census lists Jonathan Haralson holding 13 people in bondage. One was a 14-year-old boy. This was likely Jeremiah Haralson. It is impossible to say if any of the teenager's loved ones made the journey with him.

In his 1877 testimony to the U.S. Senate subcommittee, Haralson hinted at the toll this abuse and dislocation had on those who survived slavery.

“The colored men ... especially in Alabama, where I have been a slave until 1865, are afraid of the white men,” Haralson said. “He has been raised to be afraid of them. He is right there with the men that he used to belong to, and he has been brought up to fear and dread the white men, and he dreads them yet.”

How Haralson learned to read when so many in power opposed black education

Selma grew rich off the toil of the enslaved on surrounding cotton plantations. During the Civil War, it became a manufacturing and transportation hub for the Confederacy. Some of the enslaved in the city managed to “hire their time” and accumulate their own money. Benjamin Turner, who later became the first African-American elected to Congress from Alabama, ran his own livery business in the city, managing to accumulate $1,600 in gold — the price for a prime slave in 1860.

Benjamin S. Turner was an ally of Jeremiah Haralson's and the first African-American elected to Congress from Alabama. Alabama Department of Archives and History

This entrepreneurial skill made no impact on whites. When Turner offered his master the money in exchange for his freedom, the white man told Turner that he “wouldn’t take $5,000 for him.”

Emancipation came when Union troops occupied Selma in April 1865. Haralson, 19 years old, was illiterate. Like many other African-Americans, his first goal after slavery was learning to read and write.

This was no easy task. Schools and teachers were almost nonexistent. White planters opposed black education. In response, African-Americans set up their own schools, or offered reading and writing lessons through churches, known as Sabbath schools. Some taught themselves. Booker T. Washington learned to read from a secondhand spelling book. He later wrote: “I had learned from somebody that the way to begin … was to learn the alphabet, so I tried in all the ways I could think of to learn it — all of course without a teacher, for I could find no one to teach me.”

Haralson described himself as “self-instructed” in his 1875 congressional biography, as did his friends and allies.

“Early in 1865, (Haralson) applied himself to the study of books, and by unceasing perseverance attained a common English school education,” an 1873 newspaper story reported. The following year, Haralson’s political ally William Stevens wrote that Haralson applied himself to books “by untiring toil, and that never-ceasing perseverance which always accomplishes something.”

Haralson always valued education and educators. Like other Reconstruction-era African-American politicians, Haralson fought hard to secure adequate funding for public schools. During his time in Congress, Haralson lived in a building where five teachers resided.

The young man listed his occupation after emancipation as “farmer.” On June 1, 1870, the 24-year-old married Ellen Norwood, who was 19. Norwood was born in Alabama and kept house during their marriage. Little else is known about her. The following year, the Haralsons had a son, named Henry.

‘Feared … more than any other colored man in the Legislature of Alabama’

Haralson entered politics at age 22, from an odd direction. In 1868, he campaigned for the Democratic presidential ticket of Horatio Seymour and Francis Blair. Seymour and Blair ran a racist campaign: the campaign's slogan was “This Is A White Man’s Government; Let White Men Rule.”

Haralson later claimed that he gave speeches for Seymour for money. When he concluded his addresses, he said, he mingled with blacks in the crowds and urged them to elect Republican presidential nominee Ulysses S. Grant, who pledged to protect voting rights.

Whatever Haralson’s intentions in 1868, he firmly moved into the GOP camp by 1870. Haralson assumed a leading position on the Dallas County Republican Executive Committee, and became president of the Alabama Laborers Union, aimed at improving the lot of black workers in the state. He appears to have developed an exceptional amount of local knowledge in the Black Belt.

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“I believe the Democrats say I am a good organizer,” Haralson told the Senate subcommittee in 1877.

In 1870, he assisted Benjamin Turner in his successful campaign for Congress. A white man who saw Turner and Haralson speak in Monroeville during the campaign wrote that Haralson’s speech was “very Virginia Minstrels (a blackface group) for wit and humor, all at the expense of the carpetbaggers.”

That same year, Haralson won a seat in the Alabama House of Representatives. During his time in the House, he supported efforts to protect interracial couples and the integration of a planned college in Florence.

Haralson also made moves that — in the dry record of legislative proceedings — feel like subtle jabs at the process. When a colleague brought up a bill “to regulate the right of challenge of elections in this state,” Haralson offered an amendment to strike out the word “challenge.” When another colleague introduced legislation to protect game in Mobile County, Haralson proposed an amendment to “put in squirrels.” (The House tabled both amendments.)

This 1872 photo shows Jeremiah Haralson at the beginning of his term in the Alabama Senate. Haralson managed to get a civil rights bill and an education funding bill through the chamber during his term. Alabama State Department of Archives

“He is a ready and shrewd debater; full of wit and sarcasm, and is feared, perhaps, more than any colored man in the Legislature of Alabama,” William Stevens wrote in the New National Era, Frederick Douglass’ newspaper, in 1874.

Haralson’s humor was a major part of his appeal. After hearing Haralson speak in New Orleans in 1872, Frederick Douglass called Haralson “one of the most amusing, ready, witted, and gifted debaters that took part in the proceedings.”

“If we could find it in our heart to criticize one we like well,” Douglass wrote, “we should say he is all the while in danger of letting his immeasurable love of drollery get the better of the more serious side of his nature, and preferring to make men laugh to making them think, for it is in his power to do the latter as well as the former.”

Haralson won election to the Alabama Senate in 1872, defeating former Confederate Gen. Edmund Pettus. Haralson’s first year in the Senate was the most successful of his public career. He passed a bill in the Senate requiring the state to provide proportionate funding of schools. (A House version of the measure appears to have become law.) He also sponsored a civil rights bill that required railroad, ferry and hotel operators in the state to provide equal accommodations to those using their services. Democrats dragged debate over the measure out for weeks, but it passed the Senate 18 to 9 in early April 1873.

Senators watered down Haralson's bill after its introduction, and it failed to pass the House. But it enraged Bourbon Democrats — “Africa is still on the rise and Caucasia on the downgrade!” the Montgomery Advertiser yelled on April 6, 1873 – and gave Haralson an issue as he set his sights on Alabama’s 1st Congressional District.

A united Republican front behind his congressional candidacy helped win Haralson his seat

Editor's note: The following section contains offensive language.

The district, encompassing most of southwest Alabama, was in Democratic hands. Benjamin Turner had won the seat in 1870, but a split in Republican ranks allowed Frederick Bromberg, a former math tutor at Harvard University, to defeat Turner and another Republican in 1872.

Mindful of the earlier split, Haralson moved cautiously. At a June 1874 meeting of the Equal Rights Association in Montgomery, formed to advocate for what became the 1875 Civil Rights Act, Haralson introduced a series of resolutions demanding fair treatment from transportation companies, regardless of race.

“As citizens of the United States and of the state of Alabama, we claim all the civil and political rights, privileges and immunities secured to every citizen by the Constitution of the United States and of the state of Alabama; and we will be satisfied with nothing less,” Haralson’s resolution stated.

But Haralson also put in a statement that said support for the civil rights bill did not mean the association favored desegregated public schools. Other members of the association disagreed and moved to strike Haralson’s language. Haralson had voted against segregation measures in the Legislature, but he feared that endorsing what he called “mixed schools” would alienate white voters the state Republican Party needed. Other members of the association, unwilling to allow a civil rights organization to give any endorsement of segregation, removed the language.

Haralson continued to campaign for the federal civil rights bill as he spoke through the district. He exposed himself to considerable personal risk. While traveling to Mobile to deliver a speech, a white mob stopped his train in York, in Sumter County. Members of the mob, armed with shotguns and clubs, walked through the train looking to see “if they had any radicals (Republicans) on board,” as Haralson later told the Senate subcommittee.

“The conductor, who was a Democrat, put me in the mail-car,” Haralson said. “He said he thought it would be best for me to go into the mail-car, and I went in it and stayed there until I got to Meridian, Miss.”

Show caption Hide caption Jeremiah Haralson in a photo likely taken during his single term representing southwestern Alabama in the U.S. Congress. Haralson was the last African-American elected to... Jeremiah Haralson in a photo likely taken during his single term representing southwestern Alabama in the U.S. Congress. Haralson was the last African-American elected to Congress from Alabama during Reconstruction. Alabama did not elect another African-American to Congress until 1992. Library of Congress

But Republicans united behind his candidacy, and he won the election, taking 54% of the vote. Bromberg challenged the election results, claiming Haralson and Republicans bribed voters.

“He was elected entirely through the use of United States soldiers at the polls and free distribution of bacon to the negroes,” Bromberg wrote decades later. (A House committee under the control of Democrats dismissed Bromberg’s complaint. They concluded that black voters who got bacon had been victims of flooding.)

Haralson’s entry into Congress in December 1875 marked a high point for African-Americans at the federal level. Eight African-Americans served for all or part of the 44th Congress, a number not exceeded until 1969. Haralson was one of seven black representatives in the House, and Blanche Bruce represented Mississippi in the U.S. Senate.

The Republicans were the minority party in the 44th Congress, and Haralson served on a single committee. He did not speak on the House floor, and none of the bills he sponsored passed.

But Haralson did get noticed. In January 1876, he voted for an amnesty bill for former Confederates. When criticized over the vote, Haralson wrote a widely reprinted letter that said his commitment to civil equality was total.

“The colored man in the South wants peace and good will to all and hatred to none, and asks for others what he desires for himself — an equal chance in the race of life,” Haralson wrote. “We, as a race, cannot afford to aid in any manner in keeping up strife for the benefit of office-hunters.”

White southerners spat on Haralson’s generosity. In early February, the sergeant-at-arms of the House of Representatives, described as an “ex-Confederate” by one newspaper, pulled Haralson out of his seat on the floor and ordered him to leave. When Haralson protested that he was a congressman, the sergeant-at-arms gestured to the gallery above, saying “There’s the niggers’ heaven.”

What power the congressman had came through patronage. He consulted with President Grant on federal appointments in Alabama. Haralson managed to get a position in Washington for Bruce Thomas, a Confederate veteran from Selma who supported the Republican Party. Newspapers claimed that Thomas’ family turned its back on him due to his politics.

In the spring of 1876, Thomas contracted a fatal lung infection. Haralson, according to one newspaper, “called frequently to see him, and furnished him with all possible assistance.” When Thomas died, Haralson telegraphed his parents, asking if they wanted his remains. They sent a curt response: “Bury him in Washington.”

Knowing that Thomas was a Mason, Haralson contacted Freemasons he knew in Selma. They persuaded a lodge in Washington to bury Thomas in the city’s Old Congressional Cemetery.

“The friendly offices of Mr. Haralson prevent the remains of Thomas being handed over to the city authorities for internment in a pauper’s grave,” the Chicago Inter-Ocean wrote.

Division in the Reconstruction-era Alabama Republican Party

In July 1876, Haralson led the Alabama delegation to the Republican National Convention in Cincinnati. It was the highlight of his time in Congress. But it stemmed from one of the bitter divisions that helped destroy the Reconstruction-era Alabama Republican Party.

Show caption Hide caption George Spencer served two terms as a U.S. senator from Alabama, and was the last Republican elected to the U.S. Senate from Alabama until 1980.... George Spencer served two terms as a U.S. senator from Alabama, and was the last Republican elected to the U.S. Senate from Alabama until 1980. He led a faction of the state GOP opposed to former Gov. William Smith. Jeremiah Haralson sided with the Smith faction. Library of Congress

It’s hard to track all the fault lines that divided the state GOP. The party split along racial and regional lines. One faction of the party was loyal to U.S. Sen. George Spencer, a Union veteran who had been born in New York. Another was loyal to former Gov. William Smith, an ex-slaveholder who had been the state’s first Republican governor. Both men supported black voting rights and efforts to create a public school system. Spencer and Smith had clashed over the use of federal troops to protect black voters (Spencer supported it; Smith opposed it).

The factions fought hardest over federal jobs. Spencer had the most influence over federal appointments — critical to the success of a 19th century political party — and his use or misuse of the power led to infighting. Haralson, who sided with Smith, criticized “carpetbaggers” like the northern-born Spencer, and complained that Spencer locked African-Americans out of patronage decisions. Haralson also accused Spencer of supporting the state Constitution of 1875, which had slashed funding for public education and hit African-Americans the hardest.

In 1876, Smith declared he was reorganizing the state Republican Party and chose a delegation to the Republican National Convention, led by Haralson. Spencer and his followers held their own gathering a week later, called Smith’s gathering fraudulent, and elected their own slate of delegates. The national convention voted to seat Haralson’s delegation. The division made Haralson a target for the Spencer faction.

Haralson already faced re-election challenges. The Democratic-controlled Legislature in 1875 gerrymandered the state's congressional districts, moving Haralson and many other African-American voters into a new 4th Congressional District that included much of the western Black Belt. By the end of August, Haralson faced competition for his seat from former Republican Congressman James T. Rapier, an ally of Spencer’s and the second African-American sent to Congress from Alabama. Born free in Florence, Rapier attended college and became a successful planter after the Civil War. He served a single term in Congress from 1873 to 1875, representing a central Alabama district that included Montgomery and Lowndes County. Rapier had voted for the 1875 Civil Rights Act and for educational initiatives but lost a re-election bid in 1874 due to violence and intimidation of black voters.

Show caption Hide caption James T. Rapier represented a central Alabama district in Congress from 1873 to 1875, and voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1875. He defeated... James T. Rapier represented a central Alabama district in Congress from 1873 to 1875, and voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1875. He defeated Jeremiah Haralson for the Republican nomination for the 4th congressional district in 1876, but ultimately finished third in the race. U.S. House of Representatives

It’s not clear if Rapier was deliberately targeting Haralson, but Spencer’s supporters welcomed his challenge. Rapier campaigned around the district in the summer, amassing support ahead of a district nominating convention scheduled for September in Marion.

In late August, a local convention in Dallas County, Haralson's stronghold, instructed its delegates to not vote for Haralson. The Selma Times, a Democratic newspaper, speculated that Spencer had influenced the gathering. But Haralson was not easily set aside. At the Marion convention, Dallas County sent two delegations — one loyal to Haralson, one leaning toward Rapier. When the convention voted to seat both, a move that favored Rapier, Haralson angrily accused Rapier supporters of bribing delegates (this was never proven) and led his followers out of the convention, launching his own candidacy. Rapier got the convention's nomination.

The split in the Republican vote created an opportunity for an unscrupulous Democratic candidate. Charles Shelley was a former Confederate general who had become the sheriff of Dallas County in 1875. Haralson had endorsed his appointment with six other Republicans, writing that Shelley was a “just, fair, and honest man.” (Southern Republicans, many of whom were poor farmers, rarely had members who could afford the bonds required to hold the office of sheriff.)

The Democratic-controlled state Legislature did everything it could to tip the election to Democrats. It increased the number of precincts in Dallas County from 21 to 34. Black voters who once traveled to well-protected courthouses or stores to vote were now required to cast ballots in those precincts, under the eyes of armed whites.

“These Democrats put red ribbons in their coats and have large walking canes, and they go and crowd around the polls and stand there all day,” Haralson told the Senate subcommittee in 1877.

The law required three poll watchers in each precinct. Working with a local official appointed by the Democratic governor, Shelley drew up a list of inspectors and presented them to the Republican probate judge, Joseph Gothard. Gothard immediately protested: All the Republican poll watchers Shelley selected were illiterate. He conceded that Democrats could pick the majority of inspectors but insisted that Shelley appoint the Republicans’ preferred candidates, all of whom could read and write. Shelley rejected the list.

Haralson and Rapier, meanwhile, waged vigorous campaigns, each trying to turn out their respective bases. Haralson later claimed that he felt no personal enmity toward Rapier and recalled spending a pleasant morning with Rapier on a park bench, discussing nonpolitical subjects. (When Rapier died in 1883, Haralson presided over a memorial service for him in Washington.)

But however the candidates felt, feelings among their supporters ran high. Charles Harris, an African-American legislator and federal poll inspector who supported Rapier, later testified that Haralson’s supporters shouted him down when he tried to speak in Dallas County. The State Journal in Montgomery, a Republican newspaper that backed Rapier, claimed Haralson was “discouraged” from speaking in Lowndes County after traveling there with “one of his white pimps.”

Show caption Hide caption Charles Shelley fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War, rising from captain to brigadier general. Appointed sheriff of Dallas County in 1874, he rigged... Charles Shelley fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War, rising from captain to brigadier general. Appointed sheriff of Dallas County in 1874, he rigged the local election apparatus and resorted to threats to win election to Congress. Jeremiah Haralson claimed Shelley forced him to sign disparaging documents at gunpoint. Nearly all of Shelley's election victories were contested; Republican George Craig finally succeeded in unseating Shelley after challenging the results of the 1882 election. Alabama Department of Archives and History

Haralson faced more direct threats. At one event, a drunk white man pulled Haralson down from a box where he was speaking and threatened him with a knife. As other white men threatened them with guns, Haralson moved the meeting to an ally’s house.

Near the end of the campaign, Haralson claimed in a speech that Shelley had once been a Republican. A few days later, as Haralson spoke at a church in Cahaba, Neil Quartemas, a deputy sheriff, arrived at the church and arrested Haralson, taking him back to Selma to see Shelley. The two men ushered Haralson into Shelley’s office.

Shelley later claimed he had merely sent Quartemas as a messenger and that Haralson went willingly. This seems unlikely: Quartemas was also the local jailer. Shelley also claimed that Haralson willingly signed a paper retracting his statement that Shelley had once been a Republican, and a second paper formally withdrawing as a candidate.

Haralson said that when he entered Shelley’s office, guards bolted the doors behind him. Then, the congressman said, Shelley and Quartemas drew guns, and the sheriff angrily demanded that Haralson retract his statement about Shelley being a Republican, and withdraw from the race.

“(Shelley) said, ‘You goddamned black son of a bitch, you have got to take that back or I will murder you right here,’” Haralson later testified. Under this threat, Haralson said, he signed the papers put before him.

“Then he said if ever I mentioned it or called his name he would kill me,” Haralson said. “That was the end of this arrest. I was turned loose and went home that night.”

The next day, the Democrats circulated a copy of Haralson’s alleged withdrawal and threatened black voters. The Rev. M.E. Bryant, the pastor of a local African Methodist Episcopalian church, said Democrats told black voters that voting for Haralson could get them charged with perjury.

Haralson loses, then challenges, the fradulent election

Editor's note: The following section contains offensive language.

On Nov. 7, 1876 — Election Day — the Selma Times threatened a mass lynching if Haralson won.

“The white people don’t want and don’t intend to hurt a hair of his head, but we bid him to on his guard, and extremely careful not to bring about a disturbance of the present peaceful condition of this community,” it wrote. “Our people have in the past and propose in the future to exercise a great deal of forbearance, but there is a point at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.”

The Selma Times, 1876 The white people don’t want and don’t intend to hurt a hair of his head, but we bid him to on his guard, and extremely careful not to bring about a disturbance of the present peaceful condition of this community. Quote icon

If that message wasn’t clear, the one next to it was.

“Jere Haralson will be the worst ‘chawed up’ nigger this evening ever seen in this county,” it said.

The night before the election, George Craig, a local Republican judge, visited Haralson out of concern for his safety and urged him to leave the city. Haralson testified that he voted the following day and took the first train out of Selma.

That day, Democrats closed several polling places where blacks voted, usually on flimsy pretexts. They bullied those trying to ensure a fair election. When Charles Harris, the poll watcher and Rapier supporter, tried to observe voting at one polling place, Shelley threatened to arrest him. Throughout the county, Democrats accepted the ballots they liked and threw out the ones they didn’t. The illiterate Republican poll inspectors Shelley appointed were powerless to stop them — and probably intimidated.

“I could not read; I had to take what they said for true,” Noah Moore, a black poll inspector, later testified.

By some accounts, Haralson would have narrowly won re-election if Shelley and his cronies had not thrown out ballots in Dallas County. But with the fraud, Shelley — who failed to win a single county in the district — got elected to Congress with 9,655 votes, less than 38% of the 25,000 ballots cast in the race. Haralson got 8,675 (34%); Rapier got 7,236 (28%).

In late November, Haralson challenged Shelley’s election, charging the sheriff with violence and fraud. He later testified before the Senate subcommittee. After hearing testimony from Haralson, other Republicans, and Democrats, the majority concluded that the election had been fraudulent.

“To designate the elections of August and November 1876 in Alabama as elections by the people, in so far as the purpose of an election is to indicate the choice or will of the people, would be an abuse of the term,” the subcommittee wrote.

The report did no good. The House, controlled by the Democratic Party, refused to unseat Shelley, and Haralson left Congress. When he returned to Selma later that year, the Selma Times patted itself on the back that Haralson had not been murdered the minute he stepped off the train. But they also expressed anger over Haralson questioning the white aristocracy’s commitment to democracy during the campaign -- statements that anticipated the disastrous consequences of the end of Reconstruction.

“I told them that the Democratic Party, if they got into power, would inaugurate slavery in a form; not such as it was, but by depriving us of our right to vote; and the gentlemen who used to own us would represent us, and get up in the American Congress and say that we voted for them and sent them there, when we did not,” Haralson later told the subcommittee.

Threats from Shelley forced Haralson to flee to Washington with his family

An announcement from the Republican Party of Dallas County in May 1878 , signed by Haralson's ally, William J. Stevens. Alabama Department of Archives and History

Haralson ran again in 1878. This time, the Republicans rallied behind his candidacy. But Shelley and the Democrats had extended their grip on the election machinery. They reported Shelley getting 8,514 votes (54%) and Haralson 6,540 (45%).

Once again, Haralson challenged the election results. But the intimidation had sunk deeper into Dallas County since 1876. No one would take depositions from Haralson’s witnesses, or even swear them in to testify.

“The officers were all Democrats, and urged that if they were to perform this duty their business would suffer,” the New York Tribune reported.

A circuit judge, likely George Craig, finally agreed to take the depositions. Shelley responded by bringing indictments against Haralson, his attorney R.B. Thomas and other supporters, who were “thrown into jail until it was too late to take their testimony, when they were discharged.”

The threats forced Haralson to flee the state, with his family in tow. He moved back to Washington, where President Rutherford B. Hayes secured him an appointment as a night inspector of the Baltimore port.

For a time, Haralson pursued a career in civil service. In the 1880 Census, Haralson is listed as living on Vermont Avenue in Washington with his wife, Ellen, and his 9-year-old son, Henry. Two years later, he was working in the mail division of the pension office of the Department of Interior, earning a respectable salary of $1,200 a year.

But he seemed unable to shake the political bug. He led the Alabama delegation to the 1880 Republican National Convention in Chicago. The following year, he was a candidate to become minister to Haiti.

In the summer of 1884, Haralson resigned from the pension office and returned to Selma, to make another race for his old seat. In doing so, he lined up against George Craig, his old ally, who had successfully challenged another fraudulent Shelley win in 1882 and was seeking another term.

Haralson’s reasons for getting into the race aren’t certain, but the result was a repeat of 1876. In a district that was more than 80% black, Democratic nominee Alexander Davidson won with over 14,000 votes, about two-thirds of the total. Craig got half of Davidson’s votes; Haralson got fewer than 700. Haralson’s absence from the district likely eroded his support, but the overwhelming vote for Davidson seems dubious. Neither Haralson nor Craig challenged the results.

Wandering after the election and settling as a pension agent in Pine Bluff, Arkansas

Haralson settled in Selma after the election. He enrolled his son, Henry, at Tuskegee Institute sometime in 1885. In a letter that December, Booker T. Washington, the head of Tuskegee, wrote that Henry’s enrollment was an example of “a better class of families than we had represented before.”

As Washington wrote this, Henry’s father was languishing in a Selma jail. In November, local authorities arrested Haralson on a charge of selling “mortgaged cotton.” Haralson’s real crime appears to have been criticizing Shelley, who was up for a federal appointment. Authorities released Haralson in January after he wrote a letter (possibly coerced) denying any intention of defaming Shelley.

Haralson’s movements are hard to track after 1886. His wife disappears after the 1880 Census. His son, Henry, attended Tuskegee in the 1885-86 school year; he vanishes from available records afterward. E.J. Lavender, a Selma landlord, told congressional researchers in 1925 that Henry died in Selma around 1888, but no documentation exists.

Haralson remained active in politics and public affairs. He served as a delegate to the 1888 Republican state convention, and in 1889 participated in the Conference of Colored Men of Alabama, which demanded voter protection, better public schooling “especially in the rural districts,” and stronger protections against the tide of lynching drowning black communities in the state. But by 1891, Haralson had relocated to Pine Bluff, Arkansas, to work as a pension agent.

Pine Bluff had grown since the end of the Civil War and was the home of a prosperous black community. Wiley Jones, once held as a slave, had become a wealthy and successful businessman who ran Pine Bluff’s transit lines. There was also Ferd Havis, a local Republican leader who had also succeeded in business. Both men were active in national politics. Haralson may have met Havis at the 1880 Republican National Convention, which they both attended.

Main Street in Pine Bluff, Ark. as depicted in an 1893 guide. Jeremiah Haralson moved to Pine Bluff some time around 1891, where he worked as a pension agent. archive.org

“It is highly probable that some of the wealthiest and most influential Negroes in the nation reside there,” David Gaines wrote of Pine Bluff in an 1898 pamphlet. “It has men who are not only credible from a financial standpoint, but some of the finest educators, businessmen, ministers, physicians and lawyers in the country are residents of this very progressive and typical southern city.”

Haralson’s time in the pension bureau likely drew him to the business. In 1890, Congress expanded eligibility for pensions -- ranging from $6 to $12 a month -- to veterans who developed disabilities after their service. Widows and dependents also qualified.

But the application process was difficult. Applicants had to get their service confirmed by the War Department, and sometimes needed to obtain statements from those who served with them. Veterans then had to submit to examinations by boards of physicians, who would rate their disabilities. The Bureau of Pensions then decided whether to grant a pension.

The process was particularly confusing for those who were illiterate. Pension agents and attorneys assisted veterans in preparing applications and navigating the system.

The extent of Haralson’s work in the Pine Bluff community is not clear, but his help would have been welcome. A 2008 study found that less than 46% of African-American applicants between 1890 and 1907 got pensions, versus 73% for whites. A white newspaper wrote in 1894 that Haralson was a “king bee” among Pine Bluff’s African-Americans, though it provided no evidence on this.

Haralson’s clients included Lewis Osbrooks, a black farmer in Grant County, next door to Pine Bluff. Osbrooks had been born in slavery in Tennessee in 1835. During the Civil War, he either escaped or was liberated by Union troops, and enlisted in an artillery company in Kentucky. Osbrooks was illiterate, and the kind of person who needed the help of someone who understood pension laws.

Haralson filed Osbrooks’ pension application in November 1891. Three years later, it brought the law down on him.

The trial of Jeremiah Haralson: 16 charges of violating pension laws

In November 1894, a grand jury in Little Rock indicted Haralson on 16 charges of violating pension laws, all related to Osbrooks. The grand jury accused of forging Osbrooks’ mark on an affidavit filed on Osbrooks’ behalf; of forging Osbrooks’ marks on pension receipts and checks, and of withholding up to $500 from Osbrooks.

There were always allegations of fraud around the pension system. Pension agents could charge no more than $10 per application and needed volume to maintain business. In early 1894, authorities charged W. Bowen Moore, a Buffalo pension attorney, with filing 4,500 fraudulent claims. But Moore had the backing of a local newspaper that poured scorn on the charges and the pension bureau.

Jeremiah Haralson was indicted on 16 charges of violating federal pension laws in November 1894. This is the first paragraph of the indictment. National Archives

The financial needs of veterans were real, particularly in the mid-1890s, when the country struggled through the worst economic downturn before the Great Depression. And actual prosecutions of pension cases were rare. At a time when more than 970,000 pensioners collected money from the government, the Department of Interior in 1895 reported 598 indictments for pension law violations, and just 294 convictions.

Haralson pleaded not guilty to the charges, and several leading African-Americans in Arkansas gave him support. Both Wiley Jones and Ferd Havis signed his bond. Mifflin Wistar Gibbs, a wealthy Little Rock attorney who had been the first African-American elected a judge in the United States, testified to Haralson’s good character at his trial. Other African-Americans took the stand on Haralson’s behalf.

Determining the truth behind the charges is difficult. While the original indictment survives in Haralson's federal court file, obtained by the Advertiser, a transcript of the trial does not, and contemporary newspaper accounts gave only a general description of the proceedings.

The indictment was specific on dates and actions. Prosecutors appear to have had a host of documentation. The charges were brought by a “Pension Examiner Crutchfield” – possibly George Crutchfield, an agent based out of Memphis. (The 1900 Census shows that Lewis Osbrooks lived next door to several Crutchfields, though their relationship with the inspector is not clear.) The Daily Arkansas Gazette, which covered the trial, reported that “the government’s witnesses told a straightforward story which made things look dark for Haralson,” while hinting that Haralson’s defense, led by attorney Charles Waters, rested on a parade of character witnesses.

Waters may have had no choice. The court closed off other defense strategies. As the trial was about to begin on Dec. 6, 1894, Waters asked for a delay to allow Lenard Williams, a justice of the peace, to testify. Waters wrote that Williams, who was “seriously ill” in Pine Bluff, could confirm that Osbrooks signed the checks himself. Judge A.J. Edgerton, a former U.S. senator, denied the motion.

Haralson took the stand on Dec. 7, 1894. The Daily Arkansas Gazette reported that “his statement was somewhat contradictory and did him no good.”

Later, Waters filed affidavits from two other justices of the peace who said they saw Osbrooks sign for his checks. Osbrooks’ mother-in-law, Mary Sherrely, signed an affidavit where she said Osbrooks had gotten the money Haralson was accused of withholding from him.

“He stayed at my house several times last year 1893 when he come to get his pension money,” her affidavit said. “I know he got his money because I have seen it and has seen him with his pension papers. I know what pension papers are because I draw a pension myself.”

But it was too late.

Convicted and sentenced to the maximum penalty

On Dec. 9, 1894, the jury, deliberating for just 15 minutes, convicted Haralson. Eleven days later, Edgerton rejected Waters’ motion for a new trial. When asked if he had anything to say before sentencing, Haralson stayed silent.

Then Edgerton threw the book at him. The judge sentenced Haralson to two years in federal prison and a $5,000 fine (roughly $150,000 today). It was the maximum penalty allowed under federal law.

It was also far out of proportion to the alleged $500 in dispute, and a contrast to other punishments handed down against convicted pension agents. Moore, the Buffalo pension attorney, got 18 months in prison and a fine of just $200. George Van Leuven, an Iowa pension agent convicted on 37 charges about a week after Haralson’s trial, got a presidential pardon the following October after Van Leuven claimed that he was dying from diabetes. (Iowa newspapers the following year reported that Van Leuven had recovered and found work as a traveling solicitor.)

The federal penitentiary system was still in its infancy in the mid-1890s, and the federal government sent many of its prisoners to state correctional facilities. Haralson was initially sentenced to serve his time at the Detroit House of Correction, but on March 6, 1895, Edgerton sent him to the Albany County Penitentiary in Albany, N.Y., after the U.S. Attorney General's Office ordered Arkansas convicts sent there. About a third of the prisoners in Albany were black, and private companies contracted with the prison to put them into making brushes and shirts.

“There are so many negro prisoners engaged in the shirt industry, and working as though their very lives depended upon it, that one would take the place for a southern prison,” the Prison Association of New York State said in its annual report in 1894.

On March 25, 1895, James McIntyre, the warden of the Albany County Penitentiary, signed a form confirming Haralson's arrival. Below, James White, a deputy U.S. marshal, signed that he had delivered Haralson. White also made note of his travel expenses: $65.85.

This note is the last record of Jeremiah Haralson alive.

Show caption Hide caption This paper records Jeremiah Haralson's incarceration at Albany County Penitentiary on March 25, 1895. It is signed by James McIntyre, the warden of the penitentiary,... This paper records Jeremiah Haralson's incarceration at Albany County Penitentiary on March 25, 1895. It is signed by James McIntyre, the warden of the penitentiary, and James White, a deputy U.S. Marshal who transported Haralson from Little Rock, Ark. following his conviction on pension fraud. This note is the last evidence of Jeremiah Haralson alive. National Archives

A prison ledger recording arrivals at Albany lists five other men admitted to the Albany penitentiary on March 25, 1895, all New York state residents sentenced to 30 to 100 days. Haralson's name is not among them.

Reports from the U.S. Attorney General’s Office listed commitments of federal inmates, deaths and releases. But they had limited abilities to check the conditions of prisoners. An 1896 attorney general’s report complained that federal prisoners went to state prisons “without any special provision for subsequent inquiry or supervision by federal authority.”

“Specific provision should at least be made for frequent inspections under the direction of the attorney general, with a view to ascertaining their condition and treatment and discharging the duty involved in the relation of the government toward them,” the report said.

The Albany County Penitentiary's physician regularly listed the names of inmates who died in prison in annual reports to the Board of Supervisors in Albany. Haralson's name is not on the mortality lists for 1895 or 1896, the years he would have been incarcerated. The Albany Hall of Records, in response to records requests from the Advertiser, said it could find nothing reflecting Haralson’s time at Albany. The Advertiser could not find records of Haralson exiting the prison, and he is not on the lists of presidential pardons that the U.S. Attorney General's Office compiled in its annual reports to Congress in the 1890s.

In addition, there are no records of Haralson in any Census after the time of his incarceration, or contemporary accounts of Haralson after 1895 in newspapers reviewed on newspapers.com.

A Montgomery Advertiser story in 1901 claimed that Haralson died “a year or two ago,” though it provided no evidence and incorrectly stated Haralson had been incarcerated in Arkansas. Individuals contacted by congressional researchers in the 1920s who knew Haralson had little information to provide. A 1933 article in the New York Age, an African-American newspaper, said that Haralson was “now a minister and is still living somewhere in our Western States,” but gave no evidence.

What happened to Jeremiah Haralson?

Haralson faded like a half-remembered dream. The nation forgot, as it forgot the pain and triumph of so many African-Americans. It's possible Haralson's death wasn't recorded. It's possible he served his sentence and maintained a low profile for the rest of his life. It's possible he changed his name, or that his fate is recorded in records the Advertiser has not reviewed or could not obtain. (In response to questions from the Advertiser, the National Archives identified a 46-page file on Haralson. A request for those documents is still pending.)

The last certain fact of Haralson's life is his delivery to a penitentiary in New York State.

The last certain fact of Haralson's life is his delivery to a penitentiary in New York State.

Haralson’s official congressional biography does not mention his trial or incarceration. It does have information on Haralson after 1895, but almost none of it can be verified. In some instances it gets facts wrong — saying, for example, that Haralson was a pension agent in Arkansas in 1904, when he worked in Pine Bluff in the early 1890s. It also places him in Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. There are no contemporary accounts of Haralson in any of those states.

The official biography says he moved to Colorado after 1912, where the ex-congressman — who would have been approaching 70 — allegedly got involved in coal mining. Sometime in 1916, it says, wild beasts killed him. This story came secondhand to congressional researchers, and like so much else about Haralson, cannot be verified through official records or contemporary accounts.

But it is, at least, a better ending for Haralson than the one at the gates of the Albany County Penitentiary: not vanishing into bondage, but ascending as he had in his youth; free, independent, and fearlessly scaling the slopes in his path — to the very end, his own man.

Contact Montgomery Advertiser reporter Brian Lyman at 334-240-0185 or blyman@gannett.com.