Summary Of Slavery By Charles Ball

In Charles Ball’s slave narrative, “Slavery in the United States. A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Charles Ball, a Black Man” Ball writes about his experiences as a slave on a southern plantation. Ball writes about his deep connection with nature and his experiences in nature, as well as his life on the plantation. Through Ball’s vocabulary, observations, and awareness of his “blackness”, he is able to illustrate his connection with nature and show how it has provided him with a sense of identity. Furthermore, his strong connection with nature and his experiences as a black slave are responsible for his environmentalist view point on large scale farming.

In Charles Ball’s narrative, Ball discuses his journey through slavery, writing

From the beginning of the book, Ball has been advocating for the treatment of all aspects of farming, on large scale agriculture plantations, to improve. Ball is specifically observant of the soil, crop, and cattle quality, when illustrating plantations he visited or passes by on his journeys. He writes about the greed of southern plantation owners, and their unremitting crops of tobacco, drying out their plantations, writing, “It had originally been highly fertile and productive, and had it been properly treated, would doubtlessly have continues to yield abundant and prolific crops… but regardless of their true interest, they valued their lands less than their slaves,…”(Ball, p. 32). This quote is important because compares the white landowners view of the land to Ball’s, while the landowners focus on the money the land has to offer and are overrun with greed. Ball highlights the care and value of the land, making the distinction that if not properly treated it will be useless, and “exhausted”. Ball uses the word “exhausted”, again drawing the comparison between the soil quality and his experiences as an overworked slave. Ball’s standpoint is that nature is very giving, yet if one is greedy and unrelentingly works the land, the crops, or the slaves they will become “exhausted” and overworked and will not be able to supply as they once did. This standpoint is one that is taken by many environmentalist who believe that in order to be fruitful in agriculture production, land and cattle must be treated in a sustainable fashion or else they will not be as fruitful, in the long