YouTube has some incredible video clips from history. The History is Elementary blog alerted readers to a fabulous site where 100 great moments in American History are on YouTube video clips.I am working with Information Services to allow YouTube to be in our schools. However, you might look at the videos - you can download them into your computer and then play them to your class.
Click to go to the 100 Great Moments in American History.
Perhaps a meaningful piece of history still applicable in its sentiments today.... 
“The current application of the “separation of church and state” metaphor actually represents a relatively recent concept rather than the enforcement of a long-standing constitutional principal. This is demonstrated by the fact that the separation idiom appeared in only two cases in the Supreme Court’s first 150 years; yet over the past 50 years, it has been cited in seemingly countless numbers of Court decisions.”Many of our citizens think that the phrase “separation of church and state” appears in the Constitution.
The 1947 Supreme Court 5-4 decision in Everson v. Board of Education established the contemporary standard for this phrase. In that decision the court announced:“Our sentiments are uniformly on the side of religious liberty: that religion is at all times and places a matter between God and individuals, that no man ought to suffer in name, person, or effects on account of his religious opinions, that the legitimate power of civil government extends no further than to punish the man who works ill to his neighbor. But sir, our constitution of government is not specific…. Therefore what religious privileges we enjoy (as a minor part of the State) we enjoy as favors granted, and not as inalienable rights.”Jefferson wrote a short reply to the Danbury Baptists on January 1, 1802, in which he assured them that the free exercise of religion would not be interfered with by the national government. He wrote:
“Gentlemen, - the affectionate sentiments of esteem and approbation which you are so good as to express towards me on behalf of the Danbury Baptist Association give me the highest satisfaction. Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God; that he owes account to no other for his faith or his worship; that the legislative powers of government reach actions only and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church and State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties. I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection and blessing of the common Father and Creator of man, and tender you for yourselves and your religious associations assurances of my high respect and esteem.”
Jefferson believed that religious liberties were inalienable rights and that the issue of religious expression was above federal jurisdiction.
On August 23, 1833, Great Britain became the first of Europe’s great empires to abolish slavery in all of its colonies. While not the first to abolish slavery, Britain was the most politically powerful nation to do so up to that time. This was the beginning action that would result in the abolishing of slavery by various countries around the world.
