[Albion Winegar]. American journalist and author, born in Williamsfield, OH, on the 2nd of May 1838. He studied at Rochester University (1859–61), and served in the Union army (1861–65). After the war he went to Greensboro, NC, began the practice of law, entered politics and published the Union Register; was a member of the state constitutional conventions of 1868 and 1875. In 1868 was elected judge of the North Carolina superior court; in 1876 appointed pension agent. His views on the subject of Southern reconstruction and his interference in Southern affairs caused several attempts to be made for his capture by the Ku-klux Klan, which was especially strong in his judicial district; but they all proved failures. In 1879 he published A Fool’s Errand, by One of the Fools, a novel drawn from his own experience in endeavoring to assist a Southern community to a better political life, of which 135,000 copies were sold. He edited the Continent, a New York weekly (1882–84), and in 1889 was chosen professor in the Buffalo Law School. He published several law books, The Code, with Notes (1877); A Digest of Cited Cases (1879); Statutory Decisions of the North Carolina Reports (1879), and is the author of a number of more popular works, mostly novels, with strong political or socialistic motives, among which are Toinette (1874); Figs and Thistles (1879); Bricks without Straw (1880); Hot Ploughshares (1883); Pactolus Prime (1890); Out of the Sunset Sea (1894); and The Battle of the Standards, a treatise on the coinage question (1896).
