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Joy Beasley, Cultural Resources Program manager at Monocacy National Battlefield, describes the recent discovery and effort to excavate a 200 year-old slave quarters. The discovery took place on the National Park Service property near the site of the Best Family Farm, built in the 1790s by a family of French Caribbean immigrants who owned about ninety slaves.

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We visited George Washington’s Mount Vernon, where visitors find newly re-interpreted slave quarters and a more historically accurate and nuanced depiction of slave life in 18th century Virginia. We hear from Dennis Pogue, Vice President of Preservation, and curator Susan Schoelwer, who tell us what archaeological research reveals about the enslaved people who worked Washington’s plantation.

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James Madison, the fourth President of the United States & often referred to as the "Father of the Constitution," owned about a hundred slaves at Montpelier, his 4600- acre estate in Orange County, Virginia.  American History TV traveled 90 miles south of the nation's capital to learn about an archaeological project investigating the enslaved communities of James Madison's Montpelier.

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American History TV travels to James Madison's Montpelier in Orange County, Virginia. In this program we learn about the Madison family cemetery, a nearby slave cemetery, and James Madison’s “temple,” a Greek and Roman inspired structure that James Madison had built in the early 1800's.  

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The Detroit Historical Society hosted descendants of people both slave and free who traveled and worked on the Underground Railroad for an evening of conversation and commemoration. Panelists talk about ancestors who fled slavery and those who assisted them. This is the second half of a two-part program.

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Owen Lovejoy was an abolitionist, underground railroad "conductor" and Republican U.S. Congressman from Illinois who served from 1857 to 1864. He's the subject of a U.S. Capitol Historical Society forum with Owen Muelder, director of the Galesburg Colony Underground Railroad Freedom Center at Knox College in Illinois.

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The Detroit Historical Society hosted descendants of the Underground Railroad for an evening of conversation and commemoration. Panelists talk about their slave ancestors who traveled the Underground Railroad to freedom in Michigan, the symbolism of their journey, and what they encountered along the way. This is the first half of a two-part program.

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This June marks the 50th Anniversary of two of President John F. Kennedy’s most memorable speeches. On June 10th 1963, JFK delivered the commencement address at American University known as his “Peace Speech.” He called for high-level negotiations with the Soviet Union, a nuclear test ban treaty and an end to the Cold War.  On June 26th 1963, President Kennedy took a harder line in West Berlin, famously stating that as a free man he took pride in the words “Ich bin ein Berliner.” This is a discussion from the Kennedy Presidential Library about the significance and lasting influence of these two addresses.

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The Battle of Gettysburg took place July 1-3, 1863, in Pennsylvania, as Union forces turned back an invasion of the North by Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. The Union victory inspired President Abraham Lincoln to call for “a new birth of freedom” in his address a few months later dedicating the Soldiers’ National Cemetery at Gettysburg. C-SPAN's American History TV was LIVE on June 30 from Gettysburg National Military Park covering events commemorating the 150th anniversary of the battle, including remarks by scholars such as Harold Holzer, Allen Guelzo, and Doris Kearns Goodwin, as well as your calls and tweets for Civil War Institute Director Peter Carmichael and novelist Jeff Shaara.

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