With regard to the Columbian Orator, Frances Smith Foster indicates that Douglass’s study of this text influenced his development and informed his experience as a public speaker so that “When he wrote his narrative, it was heavily influenced by his training in rhetoric” (56).
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).
Lucinda MacKethan indicates that it’s relevant that Douglass receives The Columbia Orator at the age of 12 because Protestant children often begin the confirmation process at this time in their lives. She writes, “Douglass shows himself, then, at the ‘perfect’ age for receiving, as if by divine intervention, his own sacred text” (61).