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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Albany Law School professor Paul Finkelman talks about the practice of kidnapping freemen from the North and sending them South during the 19th century. He also discusses the wide-spread practice of renting slaves and how this tied non-slave owners to the slave system. Paul Finkelman has taught classes and written about the slave trade for many years. This interview took place at the Organization of American Historians meeting in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
 

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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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Vanderbilt University history professor Richard Blackett tells the stories of fugitive slaves, examining how they used the U.S. Mail to communicate with other slaves and how they planned and executed escapes to Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean. This event was hosted by Penn State University's Richards Civil War Era Center.

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Lucia Stanton, senior historian at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, has been studying and writing about Thomas Jefferson and his enslaved community for more than 30 years. In this program, she argues that the President sometimes treated his slaves as human beings and at other times as property. Using thousands of records kept by the third president, Stanton attempts to imagine what life was like from the point of view of the slaves. She is joined by historian Dianne Swann-Wright to discuss their ongoing oral history project that has collected the stories of over 170 descendants of Monticello’s slaves.

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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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