On September 10th, Mrs. Wright’s 8th block AP U.S. History hosted a guest speaker to lecture on early slave trade and the Columbian Exchange/ the Middle Passage. Her name was Dr. Dressler from William and Mary. She is a professor that specializes in early American history. That is her “niche”. For a little background on Dressler, she attended Longwood University for her undergrad. Then, she earned her PhD at Northern Illinois University. She is also a part-time author and is working on her first book called File Commodity. She is a very informative and passionate speaker.
Our reporter, Emma Duncan, was delighted to receive a chance to witness her lecture. This article explains in detail Dressler’s process and interesting facts from the lecture.
Dressler began by asking the class about the slave runaway reading Mrs. Wright assigned. The APUSH students are currently learning about early American slavery, so this was fitting. Then, she went over important words to know like unfreedom and chattel, meaning moveable property. She went on to explain different types of unfree labor, slaves with society, and indentured servitude v. convicted servitude.
Dressler went on to explain the middle passage. Saying, “12.5 million slaves were transported to Americas from Africa”. This is an extremely high number that resulted from the Transatlantic Slave Trade. A million die in the Middle Passage from this. But only 400k of this extremely high number went to the U.S.
After this, Dressler had us interact with the Transatlantic Slave Database. It contains every ship that Historians know of as well as interesting categories like resistance and gender. On average, 1/10 vessels to Americas from Africa had revolts/insurrections.
She then ended the lecture with ways on how historians analyze historical documents and verify sources. She also talked about runaway slaves in London, which was an interesting way to end.
Unfortunately, Emma had to leave early and did not get a personal interview
Dressler is available to contact on the William and Mary website with any further questions!
