Repeatedly sold from the Chesapeake to the Deep South, Charles Ball witnessed the beginnings of the internal slave trade
Date(s): recaptured June 1830, published narrative in 1837
Location(s): Maryland; South Carolina; Savannah, Georgia; Baltimore, Maryland; Philadelphia
Outcome: Freedom
Summary:
Charles Ball (National Park Service)
Born into slavery in Maryland around 1781, Charles Ball was sold to a series of different slaveholders and separated from his family. Still, Ball found some independence through being hired out (or rented) as a cook for the US Navy. Ball escaped with the aid of a free Black sailor, only to be recaptured and sold to South Carolina. Ball managed to flee South Carolina and return to Maryland and his family. When the War of 1812 erupted, Ball chose to enlist in the US Navy rather than flee to British lines. But more than a decade later in 1830, slave catchers tracked down the War of 1812 veteran and took him to Georgia. Ball escaped one final time and relocated to Philadelphia, where he dictated his life story to white abolitionist Isaac Fisher, published as Slavery in the United States (1837), which was widely reprinted. But Fisher heavily edited Ball’s story, and some scholars suspect that an abridged version published in 1859 came closer to conveying Ball’s own voice.
Related Sources
- Isaac Fisher (ed.), Slavery in the United States: A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Charles Ball (New York: John S. Taylor, 1837)
- Fifty Years in Chains, or, The Life of an American Slave (New York: Dayton, 1859) (abridged edition)