In 1812, Joshua Barney, a retired naval hero of the Revolutionary War proposed a plan for a fleet of American barges to defend the Chesapeake Bay area against the British. In August, 1814, Barney was forced to destroy & sink his fleet of 15 vessels in Maryland's Patuxent River to prevent their capture. The suspected flagship "Scorpion" was discovered under the river mud in 1979 and partially excavated. Now, underwater archaeologist Robert Neyland of the Navy History and Heritage Command is leading a team to further study the wreck. American History TV visited the river with Mr. Neyland to learn about the project, and visited the Navy's Underwater Archaeology lab in the Washington Navy yard where the artifacts are studied.

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USS Constitution launched in Boston in 1797 and was named by President George Washington for the Constitution of the United States. The ship gained fame during the War of 1812, defeating British warships in three sea battles and earning the nickname “Old Ironsides.” American History TV visited the USS Constitution Museum, located at the same pier in Boston where the ship is docked today. The museum’s president, Anne Grimes Rand, gave us a tour of some of the museum’s exhibits and artifacts, which trace the history of the ship from its construction, to its role in the in the War of 1812, to the present day. 
 

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USS Constitution launched in Boston in 1797 and gained fame during the War of 1812, defeating British warships in three sea battles and earning the nickname “Old Ironsides.” American History TV visited the USS Constitution Museum in Boston, located at the same pier where the ship is docked today. The museum's president, Anne Grimes Rand, gave use a tour of an exhibit looking at the lives of sailors aboard USS Constitution during the War of 1812.

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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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This is a look at President Eisenhower’s views and actions in the area of civil rights, including the desegregation of the armed forces, his appointments of pro-civil rights Supreme Court justices and the dispatching of the 101st Airborne division to assist in the integration of Little Rock High School in Arkansas.  This discussion was part of a conference titled, “Ike Reconsidered: Lessons from the Eisenhower Legacy for the 21st Century,” co-hosted by Hunter College, City University of New York, the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute & the Eisenhower Foundation.

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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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Forty years ago, in May 1973, a U.S. Senate Select Committee began its nationally televised hearings on Watergate. James McCord was one of the five men arrested a year earlier attempting to bug the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate complex in Washington, DC. McCord was security director for the 1972 Committee to Re-elect President Nixon, and was convicted of conspiracy, burglary and wiretapping in January 1973. In this portion, Committee Chair Sam Ervin questioned McCord about his January 1973 conversation with Jack Caulfield, a former White House aide.

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