Rebecca Nelson

Those African people who were on that ship were specifically sold in a trading transaction that we now recognize as something that became common during the transatlantic slave trade, there were African people in America before that date but not having been sold in the same specific way.

By using this, he was able to show men who had never ever been to see a slave trip or had visited any docks, or warehouses or plantations themselves ... how terrible the conditions for the enslaved Africans were on board these ships.