Although not successful in gaining elective office again, Haralson was appointed to Republican patronage positions in the Customs Service, Department of Interior, and the Pension Bureau in Washington, DC.

[3] When Thompson died, Jeremiah was sold to Judge Jonathan Haralson who later was a president of the Southern Baptist Convention, of Selma, Alabama.

Some ex-Confederates questioned his sincerity, as most freedmen were supporting the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln, who had gained their emancipation.

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.

[7] As a member of Congress, Haralson sought a general amnesty for former Confederates (who had been temporarily barred from office) in order to help create harmony between blacks and whites.

[citation needed] Haralson's oratorical abilities drew the commendation of Frederick Douglass, an established civil rights leader in the North.

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.

But the Democratic candidate Charles M. Shelley, former Dallas County Sheriff, won the seat with 38% of the vote.

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.

[9] Anecdotal evidence compiled in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress reported that he moved to Texas, then Oklahoma and Colorado, worked as a coal miner and was killed by wild animals while hunting near Denver c. 1916.

[7] However, no corroborating evidence has been found for either his Western travels or his unusual death, leaving his fate an unsolved mystery.