After emancipation, Haralson taught himself to read and write and worked for a time as a farmer. He became involved in politics. In 1868 he campaigned for Democrat
Horatio Seymour to defeat Republican
Ulysses S. Grant for president. Some ex-Confederates questioned his sincerity, as most
freedmen were supporting the Republican Party of
Abraham Lincoln, who had gained their emancipation. Some sources say that Haralson was a candidate for U.S. Congress in 1868. But the official results do not list him as a candidate. He would have been running from the Alabama First District, which reported 100% of votes for one candidate, so they may have conducted a primary in which he was defeated. In 1870 Haralson allied with the Republican Party, but he maintained a network with some Democratic leaders. Republicans were suspicious of Haralson because of his friendships with Democrats such as
Jefferson Davis, former president of the Confederacy; Rep.
Lucius Q. C. Lamar of Mississippi, and Georgia Senator
John B. Gordon, who was later elected as governor of that state. In 1876 Haralson ran for reelection. Due to redistricting by the state legislature to accomplish gerrymandering, he was running for
Alabama's 4th congressional district, which then had a black majority. Election campaigns in the 1870s had been violent as Democrats sought to regain political control of the state, using fraud, intimidation and physical violence to suppress the black vote, because of the black-majority or near-majority population in many counties, who were voting for Republican candidates. Former congressman
James T. Rapier, who was also African American, had bought a plantation in this district. This was the only remaining Alabama district in which the black population still comprised a majority population. Rapier won the Republican primary and thus the nomination, but Haralson ran as an independent. Their competition split the black Republican vote: Haralson received 33.93% of the vote, more than Rapier's 28%. But the Democratic candidate
Charles M. Shelley, former Dallas County Sheriff, won the seat with 38% of the vote. Haralson ran against Shelley again in 1878. He received 42.57% of the vote, or 6,545 votes, and was defeated again. This was considerably lower than the 8,675 he had received two years before, showing the effects of Democratic suppression of the black Republican vote. In 1879, Haralson was appointed by President
Rutherford B. Hayes to a Federal patronage position in the United States customhouse in
Baltimore, Maryland. He was later employed as a clerk at the
Department of the Interior. Appointed on August 12, 1882, to the
Pension Bureau in
Washington, D.C.; he served until August 21, 1884. Haralson moved to
Louisiana, where he engaged in agricultural pursuits. He moved to
Arkansas in 1891, where he served as pension agent. He was indicted and convicted on charges of pension fraud in 1894. Haralson vanishes from the historical record upon entering the Albany County Penitentiary in
Albany, New York on March 25, 1895 at the age of 49. ==Personal life==