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On January 20th, 1989, George H.W. Bush was sworn in as the 41st President of the United States. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor administering the vice-presidential oath to Dan Quayle, followed by Chief Justice William Rehnquist administering the presidential oath to George H.W. Bush.

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On January 20th, 1993, Bill Clinton was sworn in as the 42nd President of the United States. Watch C-SPAN’s coverage of Bill Clinton and his family on that inauguration day.

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January saw the start of a new legislative cycle, with a series of new governors installed in office. C-SPAN is covering several State of the State addresses, in which the Governor's laid forth their agenda and policy initiatives. See featured speeches from Indiana, and Mississippi.

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Actor Sam Waterston will recite Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural address to mark the 150th anniversary of his swearing-in as President of the United States on March 4, 1861. The oath of office will be re-enacted and Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer will deliver remarks. As was the sequence in 1861, the swearing-in follows the reading of the inaugural address.

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In this program from our 1999 "American Presidents: Life Portraits" series we focused on James Garfield's life and career. Historians discussed Garfield's military service, his election as president and assassination shortly after his inauguration. Suzanne Miller, the site manager at Garfield's home in Mentor, Ohio, talked about several of the artifacts and documents that Garfield left behind. 

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C-SPAN’s Local Content Vehicles take American History TV on the road. Throughout the weekend of May 18-20 we feature the history of Columbia, South Carolina.

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Thousands of colonists rejected the War for American Independence and many fled to the British stronghold of New York City. San Jose State University History Professor Ruma Chopra discusses the situation in the city and the perspective of those who looked upon the British as natural allies in religion, language and blood and thought the violence of rebellion was unnecessary and unlawful.

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American History TV visited San Francisco’s Chinatown to follow historian Charlie Chin as he tells the story of the Chinese in America to a group of college students. This is part one of a three-part series on San Francisco’s Chinatown. This portion of the series was recorded in the Chinese Historical Society of America Museum.
 

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Metropolitan State University professor Douglas Rossinow teaches a class on the Iran-Contra affair, which took place in the mid-1980s during the Reagan Administration. The Iran-Contra affair stems from Reagan administration officials funding the Contras - who were fighting against the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua - with money from the sale of arms to Iran. The arms were being sold to Iran in the hope of gaining the release of American hostages held in Lebanon - hence the reason the affair is sometimes called as the “arm-for-hostages” scandal. Metropolitan State University is in St. Paul, Minnesota.

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