Following defeat at the end of the American Civil War, the county was part of an area occupied by Federal troops under Reconstruction. The white minority in the county bitterly resented federal authority and the constitutional amendment granting the franchise to freedmen. A majority in the county, they elected a bi-racial county government dominated by Republican Party officeholders. Republican dominance in local offices continued in the county until 1880, but the conservative whites of the Democratic Party regained control of the state government before the official end of Reconstruction. In 1880, the Citizen's Party of Harrison County, amid charges of fraud and coercion, gained control of elected positions in the county government after winning on a technicality, which involved hiding a key ballot box. They retained such control of the county into the 1950s, aided by the state's disenfranchisement of blacks at the turn of the century by a variety of laws, including those to permit white primaries.