Juneteenth is the official federal holiday President Biden signed into law in 2021.
I celebrated by visiting the Marietta House Museum in Glen Dale, Maryland. On the one hand, it’s a former tobacco plantation and home for Gabriel Duvall and generations of his family, so think—beautiful brick federal home, well-maintained, lovely antiques, perfect furniture of the era, and grounds.
Or, think — slaves, as many as forty at one time. In 1816, there were Black slaves, Black families, Black kids, and Black broken families, all enslaved, everyone working on the Duvall plantation. The Black ten-year-old children’s jobs were to carry buckets of water to the house from the creek, lots of big buckets of water. A big house with a big family requires lots of water for cooking, cleaning, and laundry. And no, the creek wasn’t close enough to see from the steps of the house.
Black mothers with babies were also nursing the Duvall family’s babies and other nearby families’ children while they tended to the owners’ children as well as their own. And, of course, the field Blacks hoed the fields of tobacco by hand. I can’t even imagine how many hoes in the hands of those enslaved farmers it took to keep those tobacco fields in good shape.
Owner Gabriel Duvall (1752-1844) was an attorney. He had a separate law office near the big main house and served as a Member of Congress and an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court (1811-1835). Duval cut his reputation on representing over 120 enslaved men, women, and children in court for their freedom. But! he kept his own slaves and eventually was petitioned in court by Thomas and Sarah Butler — Duvall’s own enslaved people who worked in Duval’s home and plantation — for their freedom.
This is the PARADOX of Gabriel Duvall and the Marietta plantation. On the one hand, Duvall and his family prospered from the labor of the many enslaved people working on his plantation. On the other hand, Duvall fought in court for the freedom of some enslaved people belonging to other plantation owners. But Duvall wanted to keep his enslaved people and fought to keep them; at the same time, he also worked to free other people’s enslaved people.
See the video here: Marietta House Museum — A Brief History
Marietta House Museum, Glen Dale, Maryland
Postscript: I am compelled to add that these “PARADOXES” are not unusual in the history of the United States. The Duvall family paradox is about the tragedy of enslaved people and the duplicitous nature of people.
Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, yet he owned slaves, as did George Washington.
For the Declaration, maybe the PARADOX reflected the hopes and dreams of “some day.”
Still, today, we have many current PARADOXES ongoing in our government. To be continued.