In addition to sarcasm that is evident here, with Douglass’s reference to the fact that “a very different-looking class of people” has resulted from the sexual assault of enslaved black women by white men, his allusion to the “lineal descendants of Ham” recalls the idea that black people were supposedly condemned to slavery by God. A more biblically-accurate reading of African-American slavery than the one Douglass is mocking would question whether or not bondage indicates that black people are derived from Ham, or if they’re actually derived from Shem, whose descendants–the Israelites–were warned that they’d be transported to slavery on wooden ships if they broke their covenant with the Heavenly Father.
Douglass’s reference to black people as the children of Ham wasn’t formerly as peculiar in black texts as it might seem now. In a passage that features other biblical language, like the use of the word “Ethiopian” to characterize any black person, George Schuyler describes a fictional town in Black No More called Happy Hill, Mississippi, in which black people–or “The Sons or Daughters of Ham,” as they are called–are “either hung or shot and then broiled” in order to “lighten the dullness of the place.”
Douglass suggests that there was an inverse correlation between his desire to read and his master’s desire for him to remain ignorant, and that his master’s opposition made him even more convinced that reading could be useful to him. While it seems evident that one purpose Douglass had in mind was to use the skill to make progress in the material world, and obtain his freedom, in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs tells the story of a pious, older black man who was willing to assume the risk of learning to read illegally so he could decipher the words of the bible.
These two examples are relevant to the debate surrounding the “Gateway of Death” theory, or the disagreement about whether or not black people sang songs that seemed to be about spiritual matters– but were actually coded references to, and sometimes directions for, escaping from enslavement on earth–or if the references to freedom in black spirituals actually had to do with the freedom they expected to feel when they were released from their lives, into heaven.
In keeping with Lucinda MacKethan’s assertion that Douglass’s autobiography has religious overtones, it’s worth noting that the “hungry white street urchins” who Douglass bribed “with bread” were enacting a chiasmatic reversal of scripture. Matthew 4:4 reads “But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” While Douglass is willing to relinquish bread for words, or for the ability to wield words, the boys he learns from inadvertently offer him ability with words, in exchange for bread. Furthermore, MacKethan characterizes this scene as a “‘first communion’ experience complete with consecrated bread” (61).
The bible verse alluded to at the bottom of this page is Luke 12:47. Ironically, the two verses that proceed it read:
But and if that servant say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming; and shall begin to beat the menservants and maidens, and to eat and drink, and to be drunken;
The lord of that servant will come in a day when he looketh not for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in sunder, and will appoint him his portion with the unbelievers.
So even though Captain Auld referenced this passage to justify his treatment of black people, the chapter could be said to convict him, a purported servant of God who will be punished by his “lord” for beating other servants.
This reference to “a thief in the night” alludes to Christ’s coming, in keeping with 2 Peter 3:10 and 1 Thessalonians 5:2, but Douglass’s description of Covey’s snake-like cunning is more consistent with a description of Satan.
Douglass’s description of himself sounds like the prophet Isaiah’s description of Israel after it has forsaken God. Characterizing the people as if they are a body, Isaiah says:
From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment.