The Book of Training by Colonel Hap Thompson of Roanoke, VA, 1843 : Annotated From the Library of John C. Calhoun

Book written by a "land-owning white gentleman" who wrote this book of guidance on how to train slaves. From his intro: "I am by nature a kind, generous, peaceful, ungrudging man, known in these parts for my successful relationships with the poor black wretches that we rescued from that dark and rayless continent, brought here to be turned from pagans into heathens -- our Lord is a merciful One -- to be given the chance, the pathetic, woeful black beasts, to escape this hell on Earth. We offered them salavation, deliverance by the blood of our lily-white Lord God Jesus." "My name is Colonel Hap Thompson. I am a trainer, a handler of slaves. I read the Bible every day. I am a good Christian man, white from head to tip of toe.""This is my text on the training of our black animals, my text on shepherding them from animal existence to human coexistence with us." Includes handwritten comments by John C. Calhoun whose notes, written a decade after his presidency, began with:: "such a text is long overdue" and ended with "Has there ever existed a wealthy society in which one portion did not live on the labor of another? Is not our slavery but a modification of the condition? I must send a correspondence to Col Thompson." Percival Everett's The Book of Training by Colonel Hap Thompson of Roanoke, VA, 1843, Annotated From the Library of John C. Calhoun , is poetry within the harsh confines of a mock historical document—a guidebook for the American slave owner. The collection features lists of instructions for buying, training, and punishing, equations for calculating present and future profits, and handwritten annotations affirming the brutal contents. The Book of Training lays bare the mechanics of the peculiar institution of slavery and challenges readers to place themselves in the uncomfortable vantage point of those who have bought and enslaved human beings. Slave masters were people, too. From recent texts and films we have learned that slavery was a bad thing. Colonel Hap Thompson was simply a man about his business. His business was training other people