Rice Carter Ballard (c. 1798 – August 31, 1860) was a 19th-century American slave trader, plantation owner, and cotton merchant. His slave trading partners were Isaac Franklin and John Armfield.[1] After leaving the slave-trading business, Ballard invested his profits in land and enslaved people. Together Ballard and his investment partner Samuel S. Boyd owned about 500 people in 1860.[2] The University of North Carolina holds an archive of Ballard's correspondence and business that has been uploaded to FromthePage.com, a crowdsourced transcription platform.[3]