I believe that Douglass develops the theme of “piety”, which relates somewhat to our

paideia discussion, because Douglass explains that masters uses the acts of ‘piety’ or ‘religion’
to tell them that they’re are the alphas and they’re supposed to beat slaves and they’re
supposed to whip them and make them feel miserable. Douglass developed his theme
about piety throughout the book because he mentions a lot about masters obeying and
“following” religion as their main source of their cruelty. “I said my master found religious
sanction for his cruelty (81)” means that masters are using religion to not technically blame the
religion if they do something cruel, but Douglass believes that masters believe that religions tell
them to whip and be cruel to another human being. Which is technically wrong and religiously
wrong because Christianity will always remain “all humans are equal” or somewhere in the lines
of that.
“I have seen him tie up a lame young woman, and whip her with a heavy cowskin upon
her naked shoulders, causing the warm red blood to drip; and, in justification of the bloody deed,
he would quote this passage of the Scripture- ‘He that knoweth his master’s will, and doeth it
not, shall be beaten with many stripes’ (81)”, with this we can connect back to the Douglass
developing the theme of “piety” because in this sentence here, Douglass informs us, the
readers, that the thing that is responsible for the master’s doing is apparently religion. The
master not only quoted the Scripture from his/her religion, but also whipped the lame young
woman when he/she did quote it which shows us that this religion is a part of the master’s life.
Therefore, we can relate back to Douglass developing the theme of “piety” one more
time because we can see that in the first quote “I said my master found religious sanction for his
cruelty”, we can relate and conclude that the main reason why the master is being cruel is
because they found religious sanction. Another why he has developed the theme of “piety” is
because he describes that masters often quote the Scriptures whilst whipping the slave “He
knoweth his master’s will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes”, is a prime
example of this because while the master is reading the Scripture, he is also whipping the slave
which leads me to conclude that cruelty is within the laws of this so called religion and how
devoted they are to this specific religion.