The Brooks–Baxter War (or sometimes referred to as the Brooks–Baxter Affair) was an armed conflict in Little Rock, Arkansas, in the United States, in 1874 between factions of the Republican Party over the disputed 1872 election for governor. The victor in the end was the "Minstrel" faction (supported by the 'carpetbaggers') led by Elisha Baxter over the "Brindle Tail" faction (supported by 'scalawags' and freedmen) led by Joseph Brooks.

It came at the end of a struggle between white Republican residents in the state before the War, known as scalawags, and newer Republican arrivals called carpetbaggers, over power in state government during Reconstruction after the American Civil War.

The struggle began with the ratification of the 1868 Arkansas constitution, rewritten to allow Arkansas to rejoin the United States after the Civil War. Congress's 1867 Reconstruction Acts required rebel states to accept the 14th Amendment – establishing civil rights for blacks – and enact new constitutions providing suffrage to freedmen (ex-slaves) while temporarily disenfranchising former Confederate Army officers. Some conservatives and democrats refused to participate in the writing of the constitution and ceased participation in government. Republicans and unionists wanting Arkansas to rejoin the United States formed a coalition to write and pass the new constitution, and formed a new state government. In the wake of a wave of reactionary violence by the Ku Klux Klan and a poor economy, the coalition soon fractured into two factions: the "Minstrels", who were mostly carpetbaggers, and the "Brindle Tails", who were mostly Scalawags. This led to a failed impeachment trial of the carpetbagger Republican governor, Powell Clayton; he was then elected a U.S. Senator by the General Assembly.

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