Bricks Without Straw

Albion Winegar Tourgee (1838-1905), also wrote under the pseudonym Henry Churton, was an American soldier, Radical Republican, lawyer, judge, novelist, and diplomat. A pioneer civil rights activist, he founded the National Citizens' Rights Association and litigated for the plaintiff Homer Plessy in the famous segregation case Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). Upon the outbreak of the Civil War, in April 1861 he enlisted in the 27th New York Infantry. In 1863, Tourgee was captured at the Battle of Stones River and was held for six months as a prisoner-of-war in Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia, before his release and parole. After the war, Tourgee established himself as a lawyer, farmer, and editor in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he and his wife moved so he could live in a warmer climate better suited to his war injuries. In 1881, he moved to Mayville, New York, near the Chautauqua Institution, and made his living as writer and editor of the literary weekly Our Continent until it failed in 1884. His works include: 'Toinette (also titled: A Royal Gentleman) (1874), Figs and Thistles (1879) and Bricks Without Straw (1880).