“Every year brings with it multitudes of this class of slaves [mulatto, half-white half-black]. It was doubtless a consequence of the knowledge of this fact that one great statesman of the south predicted the downfall of slavery by the inevitable laws of population…and if this increase will do no other good, it will do away the force of the argument, that God cursed Ham, and therefore American slavery is rightly... If the lineal descendents of Ham are alone to be scripturally enslaved, it is certain that slavery in the south must soon become unscriptural; for thousands are ushered into the world, annually, who, like myself, owe my existence to white fathers, and those fathers most frequently their own masters.”
-Frederick Douglass, from Narrative of the Life of an American Slave
-Genesis, 9: 18-27, New English Translation
The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth; Ham was the father of Canaan. These three were the sons of Noah and their descendents spread over the entire earth.
Noah, first tiller of the soil, planted a vineyard. He drank so much of the wine that he became drunk and lay naked inside the tent. Ham, father of Canaan, saw his father naked, and went out and told his two brothers. Shem and Japheth took a cloak, put it on their shoulders, and, walking backwards, covered their father’s naked body. They kept their faces averted, so that they did not see his nakedness. When Noah woke from his drunkenness and learnt what his youngest son had done to him, he said:
“Cursed be Canaan!
Most servile of slaves
shall he be to his brothers.”
And he went on:
“Bless, O Lord,
the tents of Shem;
May Canaan be his slave.
May God extend Japheth's
boundaries,
let him dwell in the tents of Shem,
may Canaan be his slave.”
Charting an Accursed Course
Genesis 10 lists the tribes which descended from Ham, which included Cush, African patriarch, which seems to indicated Ham was the father of Canaan, whose tribe was eradicated by Joshua, and also of Cush, who seemed to favor black wives. Read in this vein, Ham’s curse is expressed in Cush as a degenerating form of Miscegeny, literally descending geographically into Africa, which nullifies Frederick’s hope for mulattos, which must have been sneered at by well-read, pro-slavery, Christian scholars.
