Wilson was also a successful author; his 1888 The Black Phalanx sold well and has been described as the "most comprehensive study of African American military service" of the era.

[5][2] Though Wilson was permanently disabled after his injury in the Battle of Olustee, his attempts to receive a pension, which began as early as November 1864 and continued for the next 25 years were unsuccessful into the 1880s.

[3] In early 1865 he moved back to Norfolk and initially found work in a supply store before taking editorship of The True Southerner.

[2] He was elected to serve on a committee of eight that drafted the "Address from the Colored Citizens of Norfolk, Virginia, to the People of the United States" in June 1865.

[8] Wilson was still The True Southerner's editor at the time and used his April 19, 1866, issue to defend Black civil rights and the celebration.

[6] In the 1870s he returned to Norfolk and worked for a time for the Internal Revenue Service, gauging and inspecting customs, and at one point was colonel aide-de-camp to the commander of the Grand Army of the Republic.

After the 1867 Reconstruction Acts were enacted, he participated in many party events, with what Elizabeth Varon describes as a "radical voice", being elected to the Norfolk City Council in 1870 and unsuccessfully running for Congress six years later.

The historian Earl E. Thorpe, in an analysis of Wilson's work, described the book as "a very crude effort" and noted the difficulty of covering 3000 years of history in 242 pages.

[12] The American Publishing Company sought to make the book a success, with a door-to-door campaign, subscription sales, agent selling, and widely advertising.

Their efforts were successful; the educator Irvine Garland Penn wrote three years later that sales "surpass[ed] that of any other work written by an Afro-American.

"[2] Thorpe thought Wilson's coverage of the first two wars had "nothing new", but the later ones used credible sources but suffered from excessive quotation (around half of the book) and numerous grammatical mistakes.

[2] Despite its early success and influence, Varon wrote in 2019 that The Black Phalanx had received little critical attention in the modern era; Wilson himself has often been "overshadowed" by George Washington Williams.