Peter Wheeler

Herbert Victor ‘Chalkie’ White revolutionised rugby, transformed the Leicester Tigers into the most successful club in England and was widely considered the best head coach England never had. This long-awaited first biography of Leicester’s legendary player and coach, written by former Tigers forward, Martin Whitcombe, provides a fascinating insight into the life and career of a true rugby visionary who inspired numerous future England and Lions internationals as well as generations of rugby coaches. Comprehensively researched – based on over 80 interviews with Chalkie’s family and friends, his former players, pupils, fellow coaches and rugby administrators – this heavily illustrated biography is packed with insightful anecdotes and stories from those whose lives were influenced by the non-nonsense, focussed, yet genial Cumbrian who regularly reminded his players: “Let others tell you how good you are. I’ll tell you how to be better.”

LARGE PRINT EDITION THE following Narrative was taken entirely from the lips of Peter Wheeler. I have in all instances given his own language, and faithfully recorded his story as he told it, without any change whatever. There are many astonishing facts related in this book, and before the reader finishes it, he will at least feel that "Truth is stranger than fiction." But the truth of everything here stated can be relied on. The subject of this story is well known to the author, who for a long time brake unto him "the bread of life," as a brother in Christ, and beloved for the Redeemer's sake. There are, likewise, hundreds of living witnesses, who have for many years been acquainted with the man, and aware of the incidents here recorded, who cherish perfect confidence in his veracity. He has many times, for many years, related the same facts, to many persons, in the same language verbatim; and individuals to whom the author has read some of the following incidents, have recognized the story and language, as they heard them from the hero's lips long before the author ever heard his name. There are also persons yet living, whom I have seen and known, who witnessed many of Peter's most awful sufferings. Of course, the book lays no claim to the merit of literature, and will not be reviewed as such; but it does claim the merit of strict veity, which is no mean characteristic in a book, in these days. The subject, and the author, have but one object in view in bringing the book before the public: --a mutual desire to contribute as far as they can, to the freedom of enchained millions for whom Christ died. And if any heart may be made to feel one emotion of benevolence, and lift up a more earnest cry to God for the suffering slave; if one generous impulse may be awakened in a slaveholder's bosom towards his fellow traveller to God's bar, whose crime is, in being "born with a skin not coloured like his own;" and if it may inspire in the youthful mind, the spirit of that sweet verse, consecrated by the hallowed associations of a New-England home-- "I was not born a little slave To labour in the sun, And wish I were but in my grave, And all my labor done." it will not be in vain. That it may hasten that glorious consummation which we know is fast approaching, when slavery shall be known only in the story of past time, is the earnest prayer of the

The slavery narratives of freedmen were a staple in the armamentarium of American abolitionists, since the narratives' authors could testify directly on the evils and hardships of their servitude, putting lie to the claims from slavery advocates that the practice was humane and beneficial to its subjects. Such works provided evidence for horrible mistreatment. They also added appeals to the principles of religion, making a powerful argument against the toleration of a system of human bondage. What makes Wheeler's 1839 work a very interesting variant from the standard treatment is that he was northern-born - in New Jersey - and illegally sold and taken into New York State, then grew to adulthood held in slavery in the newly settled region of western New York. His memoir is direct evidence that slavery was not merely a southern aberration, but could and did happen very close to the homes of the northern audiences for such accounts. Wheeler's narrative of his work in the farms, canals, households, and seagoing vessels he served on are also unique in their coverage. At the same time that abolitionists used slave narratives to substantiate and illustrate their position, deniers and apologists of the time searched diligently for errors or outright fraud in such witnessing, hoping thereby to dismiss all such accounts as fabrications if only one could be found faulty (just as Holocaust deniers do now with testimony from the Holocaust). Professor Hodges shows in his introduction how dissension among abolitionists led to suspicion of Wheeler's editor/amanuensis, the white Presbyterian minister Charles Edwards Lester, and the near-total eclipse of Wheeler's account until today; this is its first publication in more than 150 years.