Charles Ball (real name Charles Gross; 1780 – unknown) was an enslaved African-American from Maryland, best known for his account as a fugitive slave, Slavery in the United States (1836).
Autobiography
[[File:Charles Ball Slave Narrative Book Title Page.jpg|thumb|left|249x249px|Charles Ball was most well known for his slave narrative, the 1837 book The Life and Adventures of Charles Ball] The main source for Ball's life is his autobiography, Slavery in the United States: A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Charles Ball, a Black Man, Who Lived Forty Years in Maryland, South Carolina and Georgia, as a Slave Under Various Masters, and was One Year in the Navy with Commodore Barney, During the Late War, published in 1837 with the help of Isaac Fisher. An 1846 re-edited version by Frances Catherine Barnard, The Life of a Negro Slave, was published by Charles Muskett. In 1859, an abridged edition of this autobiography appeared, called Fifty Years in Chains, or, The Life of an American Slave. The 1859 edition only has 430 pages compared with the original 517. Some valuable parts have been omitted in 1859, such as the account of the religion of Ball's African grandfather and all references to Ball's participation in the War of 1812.
Page references in this article refer to the 1837 New York edition published by John S. Taylor.
Charles Ball's memoir is an account of the life of slaves and slave owners in the early 19th century. The book includes the stories of some other African Americans whom the author was acquainted with. So it is one of the few pieces of Western literature of that time giving a voice to the experience of Africans, including a description of religious customs in the part of Africa where Ball's grandfather grew up and an adventure with lions in the Sahara desert related by a young African.
African ancestry
According to Ball's autobiography, his grandfather was a man from a noble African family who was enslaved and brought to Calvert County, Maryland around 1730.
The 1837 edition dedicates three pages (Pages 22–24) to the description of his religion as the old man explained it to his young grandson. This description has some similarities with Islam, but there are also differences, so it is not clear if his grandfather was Muslim or not. Other Africans whose religion Ball mentions, are explicitly called "Mohamedans" (p. 165).
The precepts of that religion are contained in a book a copy of which is kept in each house, implying that the grandfather's African society had a high degree of literacy, whereas Charles Ball is illiterate. This may be worth mentioning because contemporary apologetics of slavery often claimed that Africans had been "civilized" by slavery.
Life in slavery
Charles Ball was born as a slave in the same county around 1781. He was about four years old when his owner died. To settle the debts, his mother, several brothers and sisters and he himself were sold to different buyers. His first childhood memory recorded in the book is his being brutally separated from his mother by her buyer: "Young as I was, the horrors of that day sank deeply into my heart, and even at this time, though half a century has elapsed, the terrors of the scene return with painful vividness upon my memory."
By way of inheritance, sale and even as a result of a lawsuit, he is passed on to various slaveholders. For two years, starting January 1 of an unknown year around 1800, he is hired out to serve as a cook on the frigate USS Congress that was launched in 1799. After that, he marries Judah. When his eldest son is 4 years old, he is sold to a South Carolinian cotton planter, thus separated from his wife and children who had to remain with their enslaver in Maryland.
In September 1806, he is given as a present to the newly wedded daughter of his owner and has to relocate to Georgia to a new plantation. Shortly afterwards, after the sudden death of the new husband, the new plantation, together with the slaves, including him, is rented out to yet another slaveholder, with whom he builds up a relationship of mutual trust. He becomes the headman on the new plantation, but suffers from the hatred of his master's wife. In 1809, when his dying master is already too weak to interfere, he is cruelly whipped by that woman and her brother. After that, he plans his escape, which he puts into practice after his master's death. Travelling by night to avoid the patrols, using the stars and his obviously excellent memory for orientation, suffering terribly from hunger and cold, not daring to speak to anybody, he returns to his wife and children in early 1810.