This morning Salon is running an article about how George Washington 
freed his slaves.
[...] the truth is that all of the Founding Fathers knew that owning slaves was wrong, and the slaveholders among them did it anyway. To oppose it uncategorically was to risk the integrity of the union and beggar their own families. Much is made of Jefferson's torments over the matter; he was too intelligent not to see the glaring hypocrisy in his proclaiming that "all men are created equal" while holding fellow human beings as chattel.
It was a good article, as far as it went. But it remained focused on slavery as an historical issue, rather than taking up the real question, which is how can we learn from our country's to influence the decisions we make today. Increasingly we know that basing our life on automobiles and fossil fuels is wrong. We know that exploiting cheap labor and natural resources around the world is wrong. We know that treating the world like it's our possession rather than a trust is wrong. But how do you take action when forswearing these practices puts you at a disadvantage with respect to people who continue?
I'm encouraged after seeing William Greider speak on Booknotes about his new book The Soul of Capitalism Opening Paths to a Moral Economy. In his talk, he described how people had banded together to exert pressure on a wood-products company that was using old-growth timber. They began to get other companies to cancel contracts and, eventually, forced a shift in behavior. So there's hope.