When someone thinks of slavery, he automatically comes to the conclusion of the expected relationship of a slave and his master, the Master treats his slave with cruelty and disregards human nature enslaved. In most cases of slavery, it is primarily the foundation of the relationship, but sometimes it goes deeper than what is common. In Fifty Years in Chains by Charles Ball, many aspects of slavery are illustrated, but the most important is the dynamic of the relationships between slaves and their owners. Since the relationship between these two numbers is ultimately the same across the board, each relationship has its own characteristics that make it unique from the other. These characteristics can be anything. Rather than identifying the relationship with the direct owner of the slave, we will begin with that of mistresses and slaves. The mistress is the wife of the master, who resides permanently on the estate. That being said, she tends to know all the slaves on the plantation very well. It is she who takes care of the slaves, preserving their health and happiness as much as possible. The mistress often intervenes between the master and the slave and prevents them from being innocently beaten. Charles Ball recounts a time in Maryland when his mistresses "were all good women", particularly that of his wife, who he said was a lady "of the most kind and kind feelings" (p. 48) . It may not be a direct relationship between a slave owner and his slave, but the mistress is the wife of the owner, and his wife can usually be expected to maintain the same state of mind and the same opinions on the question of slavery. However, as Ball described, some of the mistresses he met were women who practically befriended the slaves and treated them with respect and fairness to their owner's ways. Sometimes for no reason at all and other times because of a certain act that the slave did. When a slave owner punishes his slaves, he takes several factors into account. He decides the seriousness of the crime, he takes into account the effect it will have on himself and the effect it will have on his farm. No matter who the person is, male or female, the slave will pay for any crime he commits. Several different styles of punishment are described in Ball's account, from whipping with a "roasted and greased hickory gad" (p. 87) to whipping with a ten-foot-long buckskin whip twisted together to form a string similar to a firmness, some tie up their slaves. to a post and others make them lie on the ground to carry out the whippings assigned to them. When the owner considers his farm, he realizes that he must set a limit to the number of lashes a person can receive before being deemed incapable of working. According to the criminal, the owner could lose the profits from his farm because he could be missing two of his best hands. However, sometimes the master forgets everything except the crime itself and applies the strongest and most damaging punishment to teach his lesson through direct revenge. Most of the time, the slave will even plead guilty, but the master does not trust the criminal's words. An example of this is when Ball pleads guilty to the murder of the young woman.