The history of Delaware as a political entity dates back to the early colonization of North
America by European-American settlers. It is made up of three counties established since 1638,
before the time of William Penn. Each had its own settlement history. Their early
inhabitants tended to identify more closely with the county than the colony or state.
Large parts of southern and western Delaware were thought to have been in Maryland until 1767.
All of the state has existed in the wide economic and political circle of Philadelphia.
Native Americans Before Delaware
was settled by Europeans, the area was home to the Lenni Lenape , Susquehanna,
Nanticoke, and other Native American tribes. After the Swedish, Dutch colonists settled there,
and the native peoples traded with the settlers for a half century.
Dutch and Swedish colonies The Delaware watershed was claimed
by the English based on the explorations of John Cabot in 1497, Captain John Smith, and others, and
was given the name held as a title by Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, the governor of Virginia
from 1610 until 1618. At that time the area was considered to be part of the Virginia colony.
However, the Dutch thought they also had a claim, based on the 1609 explorations of Henry Hudson,
and under the auspices of the Dutch West India Company were the first Europeans to
actually occupy the land. They established trading-posts: Fort Wilhelmus in 1624 at
"Hooghe Eyland" , now Burlington Island, opposite Burlington, New Jersey; Fort Nassau,
near Gloucester City, New Jersey, in 1626; and at Zwaanendael, now Lewes, Delaware, in 1631.
Peter Minuit was the Dutch Director-General of New Netherland during this period and probably
spent some time at the Burlington Island post, thereby familiarizing himself with the region.
In any case, Minuit had a disagreement with the directors of the Dutch West India Company, was
recalled from New Netherland, and quickly made his services available to his many friends in Sweden,
then a major power in European politics. They established a Swedish South Company, aimed
at settling the territory of New Sweden, and, following much negotiation, he led a group under
the flag of Sweden to the Delaware River in 1638. They established a trading post at Fort Christina,
now in Wilmington. Minuit claimed possession of the western side of the Delaware River,
saying he had found no European settlement there. Unlike the Dutch West India Company,
the Swedes intended to actually bring settlers to their outpost and begin a colony.
Minuit drowned in a hurricane on the way home that same year,
but the Swedish colony continued to grow gradually. By 1644, Swedish and Finnish settlers
were living along both sides of the Delaware River from Fort Christina to the Schuylkill River.
New Sweden's best known governor, Johan Björnsson Printz, moved his residence to what
is now Tinicum Township, Pennsylvania, where he intended to concentrate the settlements.
While the Dutch settlement at Zwaanendael , or present-day Lewes, was soon destroyed in
a war with Native Americans, the Dutch never gave up their claim to the area, and in 1651,
under the leadership of Peter Stuyvesant, built Fort Casimir, now New Castle. Three years later,
in 1654, Johan Risingh, the Swedish governor, captured Fort Casimir from the Dutch. For the
Swedes, this was a catastrophic miscalculation, as the next summer, 1655, an enraged Stuyvesant led
another Dutch expedition to the Delaware River, attacked all the Swedish communities and forcibly
ended the New Sweden colony, incorporating the whole area back into the New Netherland colony.
British colony It was not long,
though, before the Dutch too were forcibly removed by the English,
who asserted their earlier claim. In 1664, James, the Duke of York and brother of King Charles II,
outfitted an expedition that easily ousted the Dutch from both the Delaware and Hudson
rivers, leaving the Duke of York the proprietary authority in the entire area.
But Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, Proprietor of Maryland, claimed a competing grant to lands on
the western shore of Delaware Bay, including all of the present state of Delaware. In deference
to the royal will of Charles II to please his brother, James, Duke of York, Calvert did not
press his claim. James, the Duke of York, believed he had won the area in war and was
justified in ownership. The area was administered from New York as a part of James' New York colony.
William Penn was granted "Pennsylvania", which grant specifically excluded New Castle
or any of the lands within 12 miles of it. Nevertheless, Penn wanted an outlet to the
sea from his new province. He persuaded James to lease him the western shore of Delaware Bay.
So, in 1682, Penn arrived in New Castle with two documents: a charter for the Province
of Pennsylvania and a lease for what became known as "the Lower Counties on the Delaware".
Penn had inherited James' claims and thus began nearly 100 years of litigation between Penn and
Baltimore, and their heirs, in the High Court of Chancery in London. The settlement of the legal
battles was started by the heirs' agreeing to the survey performed by Charles Mason and
Jeremiah Dixon between 1763 and 1767. Their work resulted in the famous Mason–Dixon line. The final
adjudication of the settlement was not completed until the eve of the American Revolution.
The settlement was a major reason for the close political alliance between
the property owners of the Lower Counties and the Royalist Proprietary government.
In William Penn's Frame of Government of 1682, he established a combined assembly for his domain
by providing for equal membership from each county and requiring legislation to have the
assent of both the Lower Counties and the Upper Counties of Chester, Philadelphia and Bucks.
The assembly meeting place alternated between Philadelphia and New Castle.
Once Philadelphia began to grow, its leaders resented having to go to New Castle and gain
agreement of the assemblymen from the sparsely populated Lower Counties. In 1704 members of the
two regions mutually agreed to meet and pass laws separately from then on. The Lower Counties did
continue to share a governor, but the Province of Pennsylvania never merged with the Lower Counties.
The Mason–Dixon line forms the boundary between Delaware and Maryland;
this begins at the Transpeninsular Line. The border between Pennsylvania and Delaware is
formed by an arc known as the Twelve-Mile Circle laid out in the seventeenth century
to clearly delineate the area within the sphere of influence of New Castle.
A small dispute lingered until 1921 over an area known as the Wedge, where the Mason–Dixon line
and the Twelve-Mile Circle left a fragment of land claimed by both Pennsylvania and Delaware.
American Revolution Delaware was one of the
Thirteen Colonies which revolted against British rule in the American Revolution.
After the Revolution began in 1776, the three counties became
"The Delaware State", and in 1776 that entity adopted its first constitution,
declaring itself to be the "Delaware State". Its first governors went by the title of "President".
The Battle of Cooch's Bridge was the only major military engagement of the Revolution that took
place on Delaware soil. The engagement began August 30, 1777, about 2 miles south of Cooch's
Bridge . The Americans harried the lead forces of the British Army. However, the roughly 700
colonials were greatly outmanned and outgunned. Washington's troops were slowly driven back.
By September 3, the colonials had dropped back to Cooch's Bridge. A handpicked regiment of
100 marksmen under General William Maxwell laid an ambush in the surrounding cover.
Over the ensuing battle, several British and Hessian charges were repelled,
but the Americans soon depleted their ammunition and called a retreat.
The property was taken by the British, and several buildings were burned.
General Cornwallis used the Cooch house as his headquarters for the next week as
the British regrouped. American casualties numbered around 30.
Shortly afterward, General Howe moved his troops out. On September 11, he defeated the colonials
in the Battle of Brandywine and subsequently captured the colonial capital of Philadelphia.
Delaware had a Loyalist insurrection in April 1778 called the Clow Rebellion.
In 1783, the independence of the United
States and therefore Delaware was confirmed in the Treaty of Paris.
1783–1860
Delaware was the first state to ratify the United States Constitution.
Éleuthère Irénée du Pont arrived in America from France in 1800 and founded the young
United States' largest gunpowder factory on the banks of the Brandywine River just
north of Wilmington in 1804. His DuPont firm was the U.S. military's largest
supplier of gunpowder by the beginning of the Civil War, and his descendants,
the du Pont family, are now one of the richest and most successful families in the country.
The oldest African American church in the country was chartered in Delaware
by former slave Peter Spencer in 1813 as the "Union Church of Africans",
which is now the A.U.M.P. Church. The Big August Quarterly which began in 1814
is still celebrated and is the oldest such cultural festival in the country.
The construction of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal between 1802 and 1829 brought significant
shipping interests to Delaware, expanding the state's commercial opportunities.
Delaware in the Civil War Slavery had been a divisive issue in
Delaware for decades before the American Civil War began. Opposition to slavery in Delaware,
imported from Quaker-dominated Pennsylvania, led many slaveowners to free their slaves; half of
the state's black population was free by 1810, and more than 90% were free by 1860. This trend also
led pro-slavery legislators to restrict free black organizations, and the constabulary in Wilmington
was accused of harsh enforcement of runaway slave laws while many Delawareans kidnapped free
blacks among the large communities throughout the state and sold them to plantations further south.
During the Civil War, Delaware was a slave state that remained in the Union. Delaware had been the
first state to embrace the Union by ratifying the Constitution, and would be the last to leave it,
according to Delaware's governor at the time. Although most Delaware citizens who fought in
the Civil War served in regiments on the Union side, some did, in fact, serve in Delaware
companies on the Confederate side in the Maryland and Virginia Regiments. Delaware was the one slave
state from which the Confederate States of America could not recruit a full regiment.
By 1862, Fort Delaware, a harbor defense facility which was located on Pea Patch
Island in the Delaware River and had been designed by chief engineer Joseph Gilbert
Totten circa 1819, was pressed into service as a prison for Confederate prisoners of war,
political prisoners, federal convicts, and privateer officers.
The first prisoners of war were confined in the fort's interior in casemates,
empty powder magazines, or one of two small rooms in the sally port. The first general from the
Confederate States of America to be housed at the fort was Brig. Gen. J. Johnston Pettigrew.
Prison conditions were initially "tolerable," according to research conducted by students
at the University of Delaware. "In its first year of operation in 1862,
the population varied from 3,434 prisoners in July to only 123 later that year due to routine
prisoner exchanges between the North and the South." But by the summer of 1863, following
multiple military engagements including July's Battle of Gettysburg, "the fort's population
had swollen to over 12,000 due to the influx of prisoners from the battles at Vicksburg and
Gettysburg," a change in numbers which soon began to negatively impact the quality of life for POWs.
As realization dawned that more housing would be needed for the increasing number of POWs captured
by Union troops, officials at the fort embarked on a construction program in 1862, building barracks
for enlisted men which came to be known as the "bull pen." A 600-bed hospital was also built,
as were barracks for the Union soldiers who would be brought in to guard the increasing POW ranks.
The first Confederate prisoner to die at Fort Delaware was Captain L. P. Halloway of the
27th Virginia Infantry. Captured at Winchester, Virginia on March 23, 1862, he died at the fort on
April 9. By the end of the war, the fort had held almost 33,000 prisoners, roughly 2,500 of whom
died as the conditions continued to deteriorate. Half of the deaths were reportedly due to an
outbreak of variola in 1863. Other causes of death included: diarrhea , inflammation of the
lungs , typhoid fever and/or malaria , scurvy , pneumonia , erysipelas , gunshot wounds , and
drowning . In addition, 109 Union soldiers and 40 civilians also died at the fort during the war.
Among the political prisoners held at Fort Delaware was the Rev.
Issac W. K. Handy, who had commented in December 1863 that the Civil War
had tarnished one of the nation's most cherished symbols, the American flag.
Arrested for comments made during a dinner, he was jailed without trial and, because habeas
corpus had been suspended by this time during the war, he was then held at the fort for 15 months.
Two months before the end of the Civil War, on February 8, 1865, Delaware voted
to reject the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution and so voted to continue
slavery beyond the Civil War. The gesture proved futile when other states ratified the amendment,
which took effect in December 1865 and thereby ended slavery in Delaware.
In a symbolic move, Delaware belatedly ratified the amendment on February 12,
1901 – 35 years after national ratification and 38 years after Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.
Delaware also rejected the 14th Amendment and 15th Amendment during the Reconstruction Era.
After the Civil War After the Civil War,
Democratic governments continued to dominate the South and imposed explicitly white supremacist
regimes in the former slave states. The Delaware legislature declared blacks second-class citizens
in 1866 and restricted their voting rights despite the Fifteenth Amendment,
ensuring continued Democratic success in the state throughout most of the nineteenth century.
Fearful that the 1875 Civil Rights Act passed by Congress might establish social equality,
Delaware legislators passed Jim Crow laws that mandated racial segregation in public
facilities and effectively codified the state’s tradition of white supremacy.
The state's educational system was segregated by operation of law. In fact, Delaware's
segregation was literally written into the state constitution, which, while providing at Article X,
Section 2, that "no distinction shall be made on account of race or color",
nonetheless required that "separate schools for white and colored children shall be maintained."
In 1952, Gebhart v. Belton was decided by the Delaware Court of Chancery and affirmed by the
Delaware Supreme Court in the same year. Gebhart was one of the five cases combined into Brown v.
Board of Education, the 1954 decision of the United States Supreme Court which
found racial segregation in United States public schools to be unconstitutional.
The end result of the Gebhart and Brown litigation was that Delaware became fully integrated, albeit
with time and much effort. Unfortunately, some argue that while the state of race relations was
dramatically improving post-Brown, any progress was destroyed in the wake of the rioting which
broke out in Wilmington in April 1968 in the wake of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
in Memphis. Delaware's response to the Wilmington riots was heavy-handed in the opinion of some,
involving the virtual occupation of the city for over one year by the Delaware National Guard.