Charles Ball

Charles Ball (real name Charles Gross; c. 1780 – unknown) was an enslaved African American from Maryland, best known for his account as a fugitive slave, Slavery in the United States.

Autobiography Charles Ball was most well known for his slave narrative, the 1837 book The Life and Adventures of Charles Ball. The primary 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. Another edition was published by J. T. Shryock in 1853. 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 were 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.

Charles Ball's memoir is an account of the life of enslaved people and enslavers in the early 19th century. The book includes the stories of other African Americans with whom the author was acquainted. 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 describes his religion as the older man explained it to his young grandson. This description has some similarities with Islam, but there are also differences, so it is unclear if his grandfather was Muslim or not. Other Africans, whose religion Ball mentions, are explicitly called "Mohamedans".

Life after the war In 1816, his wife Judah died. Ball married a second time, Lucy, and was able to buy a small farm with money he had earned and saved. In 1830, he was traced down by the man who whipped him 21 years earlier, kidnapped, and again taken to Georgia. He escaped again to learn that Lucy and the children had been kidnapped into slavery, and a white man had taken his farm. Because he was still legally enslaved, he was not able to claim his rights. He relocated to Pennsylvania, where he wrote his 1837 memoir with the help of the white lawyer Isaac Fisher.

Nothing is known of his later fate nor of that of his wife or children.

Depiction of slavery U.S. Navy Honor Guard salute during August 23, 2014 dedication of the official Battle Of Bladensburg Memorial by the State of Maryland showing the bronze relief sculpture of an unidentified U.S. marine, a wounded Commodore Joshua Barney, and Charles Ball the sailor (on the right) rallying around a cannon in the American forces' last stand against the British advance.