Toney authored a memoir about his Civil War and postbellum experience, The Privations of a Private, in 1905. In a review for the Tennessee Historical Quarterly, Gary D. Joiner of Louisiana State University Shreveport acknowledged that the book sounded "offensive" to modern-day readers, but he suggested that Toney "was in the norm for his time and place." Joiner added that Toney was a "white supremacist", and that the book promoted the Lost Cause ideology.
