DELAWARE

DELAWARE. Nestled along North America's mid-Atlantic seaboard, Delaware is the second smallest state in the United States, with a land area of 1,954 square miles and a population of 783,600 according to the U.S. census of 2000. Belying its modest size, however, is the significant role that the state has played in the history of the United States. On 7 December 1787, Delaware became the first of the thirteen original states to ratify the U.S. Constitution, hence earning its nickname, "The First State." Since then, Delaware periodically has been in the national spotlight, and has played an important role in the nation's political, social, and economic development.

Delaware's earliest recorded history stretches back to 1609, when English explorer Henry Hudson discovered what became known as the Delaware River on his journey to find passage to China. In the following year, the river and its adjacent bay were named after Lord de la Warr, the then-governor of Virginia, by English sailor Samuel

Argall, who encountered the waterways when seeking shelter from a storm. Although English cartographers affixed the name Delaware to the river and bay, the land itself remained unsettled by Europeans for another two decades.

In the spring of 1631, a small Dutch settlement called Swanendael was established near what is known today as Lewes Creek, in the southern part of the state, marking the first time in which a European power staked a claim to the territory. The settlement itself utterly failed, as another Dutch expedition discovered in 1632 when it found Swanendael abandoned and its inhabitants missing or dead. It was not until March 1638 that a permanent settlement was successfully established farther north, near modern-day Wilmington, by Swedish colonists arriving on two ships, the Kalmar Nyckel and the Vogel Grip. The twenty-five men who remained behind called their settlement Fort Christina, in honor of the Swedish Queen Christina, and by 1643 Johan Printz was installed as the governor of New Sweden.

While the population of New Sweden never exceeded 1,000 inhabitants, it was a successful colony of farmers occupying sturdy wooden cabins. Despite its tranquility, however, New Sweden was threatened by Dutch interests claiming the territory due to the early settlement of Swanendael. On 15 September 1655, the poorly fortified colony was conquered by the Dutch and formally incorporated as a southern extension of New Netherland. Dutch rule itself proved to be relatively short-lived, however; in October 1664 the English conquered all of New Netherland, renaming the territory New York.

The English governed Delaware as part of New York until 1682, when William Penn was given a proprietary grant to the territory, which was divided into the three counties of New Castle, Kent, and Sussex. Since the land was not part of Penn's original Pennsylvania grant, the Delaware holdings were regularly referred to as the Lower Counties on the Delaware. Unlike the other English colonies, therefore, Delaware did not have a proper name until it was finally given independence from the Penn family on the eve of the Revolution in 1776.

Given its newfound status as an independent state, Delaware participated in the Continental Congress debates over independence from Great Britain. Delaware's three delegates to the Congress meeting in Philadelphia were Thomas McKean, George Read, and Caesar Rodney. At the Congress, each state was given one vote, although the delegates were polled individually. The poll taken on 1 July 1776 revealed a division among the Delaware delegates, with McKean voting for independence and Read voting against it. Rodney, who was absent from the 1 July vote, quickly rode to Philadelphia to cast the deciding vote for the Delaware delegation the next day, in favor of independence.

Throughout the colonial era, Delaware's economy was primarily agricultural. The Swedish, Dutch, English, Scots-Irish, and Welsh settlers who came to inhabit the land grew wheat, corn, fruits, and vegetables for personal consumption and sale in larger markets such as Philadelphia. Beginning as early as 1639, African slaves were also imported for labor, particularly into the southern counties of Kent and Sussex. By the end of the eighteenth century, Delaware's economy and social structure came to be increasingly divided, with the northern county, New Castle, focusing on activities such as shipbuilding, tanning, and flour milling, and Kent and Sussex counties remaining overwhelmingly agricultural. By 1790, the dual nature of Delaware's development could be seen in two different statistics: its flour mills near Wilmington were the largest in the nation, while at the same time African American slaves toiling in the fields composed nearly 25 percent of the state's population.

Once established as the first state in the new country, Delaware's social and economic patterns continued to develop along similar lines. Flour millers such as Joseph Tatnall and his son-in-law, Thomas Lea, were among the state's most prominent citizens, but wealthy slaveholders also wielded considerable power and influence. Along with the rest of the country, however, Delaware was transformed by advances in technology and transportation in the early decades of the nineteenth century. In 1802, for example, E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company (hereafter referred to as DuPont) was founded along the banks of the Brandywine River outside of Wilmington as a manufacturer of gunpowder. Although the du Pont name was a new one to Delaware, the firm and the family behind it grew to be among the world's best known. The demand for powder in the United States was brisk, as explosives were used to clear forests and blast mines, and within a relatively short span of time the names of du Pont and Delaware were closely linked.

That Delaware had both manufacturing interests and slaveholding planters reflected the nation as a whole. Thus, when the Civil War erupted in 1861, Delaware was a microcosm of the North-South political divide. The urban and industrial northern part of the state overwhelmingly supported the Union cause, whereas the state's southern agriculturists often sympathized with the Confederacy. Delaware's top political figures appeared to reflect both sides of the conflict as well. Governor William Burton, U.S. Senators James Bayard and William Saulsbury, and U.S. Representative William Whitely all were on record as supporting the institution of slavery, yet none favored secession for Delaware. Likewise, when the matter of secession came to a vote at the state legislature, the lower house unanimously rejected the proposal, and the Senate did so as well by a vote of 5 to 3. Thus, Delaware became one of only four slave-holding states to remain in the Union during the Civil War.

Although military battles were not waged in Delaware, as a border state it did play an important role during the war. Fort Delaware, located offshore on Pea Patch Island, served as a prison for Confederate soldiers and officers, housing up to 12,500 men in squalid conditions. The state's industries also were important to the Union's war effort, with DuPont supplying one-third to one-half of all Union powder, and smaller firms supplying textiles, leather goods, rail cars, and ships.

In light of Delaware's small size and its loyalty to the Union, the Lincoln administration viewed the state as a potentially important test case in regard to emancipation. In the autumn of 1861, Lincoln proposed that Delaware slaveholders emancipate their slaves in exchange for U.S. government compensation. With some 1,800 slaves in the state at the time, it was estimated that the cost to the U.S. government would be approximately $900,000. When Delaware lawmakers rejected the proposal, the plan was dropped and Lincoln abandoned compensated emancipation, reasoning that if the plan was unacceptable to Delaware slaveholders, it would be even more vigorously opposed by other states. In part, therefore, Lincoln considered the Delaware case when he issued the more sweeping Emancipation Proclamation on 1 January 1863.

In the years following the Civil War, Delawareans cast aside disagreements that had arisen during the conflict and looked ahead to the remaining years of the nineteenth-century with well-founded optimism. Since slavery was already a dying institution in Delaware before the war, former slaveholders adjusted to Emancipation with greater ease than their counterparts farther south. As for the state's manufacturing sector, the closing decades of the century marked a time of growth and consolidation. Although some traditional enterprises such as milling declined due to competition farther west, in general manufacturing expanded and provided employment for the state's growing population. Delaware was not known for any single industry, but instead was characterized by diverse firms involved in leather production, fiber and paper manufacturing, machine building, iron manufacturing, and shipbuilding.

Delaware's economy increasingly turned toward manufacturing and business throughout the nineteenth century, but the small size of the state and of its population meant that the state's economy was likewise smaller than that of other northeastern states. In 1897, however, the Delaware legislature enacted a new General Corporation Law that ultimately made the state a leading force in the American economy. With its flexible corporation statute, its attractive tax provisions, and its Court of Chancery, a tribunal dating back to the colonial era to hear business disputes, the incorporation law was specifically designed to attract companies to incorporate in Delaware, regardless of whether or not they actually operated within the state. In time, thousands of companies incorporated in Delaware.

As Delaware's profile in the national economy rose in the early years of the twentieth century, so did the fortune of its largest firm, DuPont. Despite having been broken up in 1912 due to antitrust violations, DuPont still possessed a government-sanctioned monopoly on military-grade smokeless powder. Not surprisingly, the firm profited handsomely from powder sales during World War I, supplying some 40 percent of all powder used by the United States and its allies. With the resulting capital it now had available, DuPont and the du Pont family members at its helm broadened the activities of the firm by the war's end. Increasingly the company turned toward the manufacture of chemicals and synthetic fibers, and soon Delaware housed numerous research, administrative, and production facilities of the corporate giant that made rayon, nylon, Dacron, Lucite, and cellophane household names. As DuPont rose to become the world's largest chemical company, its power and influence within the state became unrivaled.

As the twentieth century progressed, DuPont and the thousands of Delawareans it employed symbolized the modern face of the state. Still, Delaware retained elements of its agricultural past, particularly in its southern counties of Kent and Sussex. Poultry production, especially of broiler chickens, grew at a phenomenal rate in the 1920s and 1930s, such that by 1942 Delaware farms raised approximately 25 percent of all broilers in the United States. The dramatic growth in broiler production made Sussex one of the wealthiest agricultural counties in the nation by the onset of World War II.

By the middle of the twentieth century, Delaware continued to be characterized by a dual economy—urban and industrial in the north, rural and agricultural in the south—much as it had been 100 years earlier. There was a continuity in the state's social structure as well. Just as Delaware had been one of only four slave states to remain in the Union during the Civil War, race relations in the mid-twentieth century were a mixture of both southern and northern patterns. Whereas schools, restaurants, and theaters were segregated, for example, other types of public accommodations such as libraries, buses, and trains were not. Even before the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision outlawed segregation in public schools, however, Delaware had begun the process of desegregation.

In 1950 Chancellor Collins J. Seitz of the Delaware Court of Chancery ordered that the University of Delaware admit African American students, a watershed event in the state's history that ultimately influenced the federal courts as well. Slowly, private institutions throughout Delaware abandoned segregation policies, including the YWCA in 1951, the Catholic school system in 1952, and the state's leading luxury hotel, the Hotel DuPont, in 1953. When the Brown v. Board decision was handed down in 1954, the state's attorney general, H. Albert Young, complied with federal law and oversaw the desegregation of public schools throughout the state.

Meanwhile, the state was undergoing a noticeable demographic transformation. Although the state's population growth exceeded national averages in the post–World War II era, the population of its largest city, Wilmington, was steadily declining. In 1940, Wilmington's population was 112,504; by 1999 that figure had dropped to 71,491 as increasing numbers of people sought life in the suburbs. In addition, Delaware's traditionally rural counties in the south also experienced population growth due to an increase in non-agricultural employment, as well as a willingness of commuters to travel greater distances to jobs. With suburban sprawl taking the place of urban concentration, Delaware became part of the larger megalopolis that extends from New York City to Washington, D.C., in the mid-Atlantic region.

At the close of the twentieth century, Delaware became best known as a center for American corporate business. More than 308,000 companies were incorporated in the state, including 60 percent of the Fortune 500 and 50 percent of the companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Although the vast majority of these firms did not have operations within Delaware, they nevertheless had an important impact on the state's economy through tax receipts and ancillary activities such as legal and financial services. Moreover, due to the Financial Center Development Act of 1981, the state had become a leading center for banking and credit card operations, with Delaware-based banks issuing some 43 percent of all credit cards in the United States by 1997, and providing employment to over 32,000 Delawareans.

Since its first European settlement in 1631, Delaware has transformed significantly. In a state once populated by a handful of Dutch and Swedish settlers, Delaware's population increasingly became more diverse by ethnicity and race, trends that are projected to continue. As the twenty-first century unfolds, new challenges and opportunities await the First State. Like other states in the region, manufacturing and industrial production are being replaced by service sector employment, particularly in fields of banking and corporate services. Despite its small size, Delaware has played an important role in the history of the United States; given its importance to American corporate business and the national economy, it will re-main significant in the years to come.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Delaware. Home page at http://www.delaware.gov.

Hoffecker, Carol E. Corporate Capital: Wilmington in the Twentieth Century. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983.

Munroe, John A. History Of Delaware. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2001.

Williams, William H. Slavery and Freedom in Delaware, 1639– 1865. Wilmington, Del.: SR Books, 1996.

Wolters, Raymond. The Burden of Brown: Thirty Years of School Desegregation. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984.

Jonathan S.Russ

DELAWARE

Delaware, the second-smallest state in the nation, was once compared by President Thomas Jefferson (1801–1809) to a diamond—small, but highly valued. Through most of its history this diminutive state, located between the Atlantic coast and Delaware Bay, has rivaled many larger states in economic prosperity. This prosperity has largely been associated in the public's mind with the du Pont family, the entrepreneurs who created much of Delaware's wealth in the chemical industry.

Both the Dutch and the Swedes staked out colonies in Delaware in the seventeenth century, but it was the English who took over the colony in 1664. The Duke of York ceded the colony to a proprietor, William Penn (1644–1718), who kept Delaware closely tied to his family and to his beloved Pennsylvania until 1776. Delaware was the first of the new states to ratify the U.S. Constitution in 1787.

When it was still a colony Delaware depended on agriculture. Tobacco was a major crop in the colonial period; it was superseded later by corn, wheat, and peaches. Fishing was also an important economic factor during this period. The industrial development of the state really started with the construction of railroads, the first being the New Castle and Frenchtown Railroad completed in 1832. Finished in 1838 the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad made the industrial development of northern Delaware possible.

By 1900 the population of Wilmington grew dramatically and comprised forty percent of the entire population of the state. Immigrants from Ireland and Germany in the mid-nineteenth century and from southern and eastern Europe in the early twentieth century helped to fuel this population growth and staff the developing industries. While the north developed rapidly the southern portion of the state remained agricultural and largely lacking in economic development. Farmers only gradually began to take advantage of new markets provided by the railroad.

Important Delaware industries in the nineteenth century, mostly centered in Wilmington, included flour and textile mills, shipyards, carriage factories, iron foundries, and morocco leather plants. Shipbuilding in particular was a vital force in the economy during this time, with shipyards making wooden sloops, schooners, and fishing boats located in all the port towns along the Delaware and its tributaries.

In 1802 a French immigrantẽ named Eleuthère I. du Pont, found the right combination of a power source on the Brandywine River, a good location between Philadelphia and New York, and an adequate supply of timber, constructed a mill to produce gunpowder. His family's friendship with then-President Thomas Jefferson helped assure him of government contracts. The area of Wilmington around the Du Pont factory rapidly became a company town, encompassing a large house for the du Pont family, row houses for the workers and even dormitories for single workers and a Sunday school building. Work days were long (averaging 12 hours) and wages, never very high for men, were even lower for women.

Well before the railroad came to Delaware, Philadelphia businessmen saw the need for a better transportation route between Philadelphia and Baltimore. They encouraged the building of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, linking the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland with Delaware Bay via the Delaware River, which was completed in 1829. This three-hundred-mile-long canal benefited Delaware by circumventing the longer sea route from Philadelphia to Baltimore. By this time packet steamboats were plying the canal. Big side-wheelers were also a familiar sight along the Delaware.

Around 1900 the Du Pont Company employed only around four hundred people. It was no more important in Wilmington than a number of other companies. After Alfred I. du Pont, a descendant of the founder, along with his cousins T. Coleman du Pont and Pierre S. du Pont, took over the company, it became a major producer of explosives. During World War I (1914–1918) the company supplied nearly 1.5 billion pounds of explosives for the Allies, securing the fortunes of the company and making possible a postwar expansion into the chemicals industry. In the late 1990s Du Pont manufactured a host of products such as gasoline additives, antifreeze, dyes, nylon, and rayon; the company employed 11 percent of Delaware's total work force. It had only one major rival, Dow Chemical.

T. Coleman du Pont was also instrumental in promoting the state's first major highway project, begun in 1911, to connect the southern part of the state with Wilmington. The Du Pont Highway became the hub of a network of highways that eventually crossed the state. The trucking industry soon became a major economic force in the state, making possible a healthy poultry industry and boosting the grain industry associated with it.

During the 1950s the population of Delaware grew by forty percent. Both the Wilmington area and the state capital of Dover grew, mostly because of its large air base. One of the impacts of the population's rapid growth was that it strained the state's infrastructure and social services. However because chemical plant workers fled to the suburbs, Wilmington proper actually decreased in population by thirteen percent between 1920 and 1960. Industry followed the same path, with a large General Motors and a Chrysler plant appearing in suburban Wilmington and Newark, respectively. Du Pont also located a huge experimental station near the site of the original powder mills, among other facilities. Another major economic impact was the new interstate, I-95, which was built in New Castle County in the 1960s.

Delaware's unique combination of heavy industry and coastal beauty has brought concerns to the fore regarding environmental protection. In 1971 a Coastal Zone Act was passed, outlawing all new heavy industry because it would be incompatible with the coastal environment. In 1979 this law was amended to allow offshore drilling and construction of coastal oil facilities. Environmentalists remain concerned about the dangers posed by oil tankers in Delaware Bay.

The 1980s were good to Delaware, bringing in an era of economic improvement. Unlike most of the rest of the recession-plagued nation, Delaware prospered during this time. In 1988 Delaware's unemployment rate was only 3.3 percent, the second lowest in the country. A 1981 state law raised the usury limits (interest rates allowable for money lending) and lowered taxes for large financial institutions. This encouraged over thirty banks to set themselves up in Delaware, including such large concerns as Chase Manhattan and Manufacturers Hanover. In addition, the state has been friendly to foreign corporations who seek to incorporate in the state. Since 1899 Delaware has also had an unusual law which allows companies to be incorporated and chartered in Delaware even if they actually do no business in the state and have stockholders' meetings elsewhere. Along with the efforts of Delaware Economic Development Office and the Delaware Innovation Fund (a private fund designed to encourage new companies), this law has helped to bring many new businesses to the state.

In the 1990s Du Pont remained the driving force in Delaware's economy, ranking as the tenth largest U.S. industrial corporation, with sales of $39,689 billion in 1997. A number of other sectors were contributing to the state as well. Other manufacturers were also flourishing, such as the Chrysler Corporation and those associated with the food products industry. Tourism was second only to manufacturing in importance, bringing in $836 million in 1993. Some of the most popular tourist venues include Rehoboth Beach on the Atlantic coast and the state's many historic sites.

Not surprisingly, along with its economic success, Delaware faces social welfare problems and other difficulties associated with industrial growth and decay and with urban blight. The state has lagged well behind many others in welfare benefits and has also experienced housing shortages, urban sprawl, and pollution problems. Since the mid-1970s, however, Delaware has maintained a position as one of the nation's most prosperous states. Delaware ranked fifth among all the states in per capita personal income in 1996, with average per capita disposable income at well over $23,000.

See also: Chrysler Motors, Éleuthère Irénée du Pont, General Motors

FURTHER READING

Federal Writers Project. Delaware: A Guide to the First State. New York: Somerset, 1958.

Hoffecker, Carol E. Delaware: A Bicentennial History. New York: Norton, 1977.

Mosley, Leonard. Blood Relations: The Rise and Fall of Du Ponts of Delaware. New York: Atheneum, 1980.

Munroe, John A. History of Delaware. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 1993.

Vessels, Jane. Delaware: Small Wonder. New York: Abrams, 1984.

DELAWARE

Dover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

Wilmington . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

The State in Brief

Nickname: First State; Diamond State

Motto: Liberty and independence

Flower: Peach blossom

Bird: Blue hen chicken

Area: 2,489 square miles (2000; U.S. rank: 49th)

Elevation: Ranges from sea level to 440 feet above sea level

Climate: Temperate, with mild winters and hot summers

Admitted to Union: December 7, 1787

Capital: Dover

Head Official: Governor Ruth Ann Minner (D) (until 2009)

Population

1980: 594,000

1990: 666,000

2000: 783,600

2003 estimate: 817,491

Percent change, 1990–2000: 17.6%

Percent change, 2000–2003: 4.3%

U.S. rank in 2003: 45th

Percent of residents born in state: 48.3% (2000)

Density: 401.1 people per square mile (in 2000, based on 2000 land area)

2002 FBI Crime Index Total: 31,803

Racial and Ethnic Characteristics (2000)

White: 584,773

Black or African American: 150,666

American Indian and Alaska Native: 2,731

Asian: 16,259

Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander: 283

Hispanic or Latino (may be of any race): 37,277

Other: 15,855

Age Characteristics (2000)

Population under 5 years old: 51,531

Population 5 to 19 years old: 166,719

Percent of population 65 years and over: 13%

Median age: 36 years (2000)

Vital Statistics

Total number of births (2003): 12,120

Total number of deaths (2002): 6,860 (infant deaths, 96)

AIDS cases reported through 2003: 3,231

Economy

Major industries: Chemicals, agriculture, food products, paper products, printing and publishing, rubber and plastic products

Unemployment rate: 4.0% (November 2004)

Per capita income: $33,321 (2003; U.S. rank: 12th)

Median household income: $50,451 (3-year average, 2001-2003)

Percentage of persons below poverty level: 7.7% (3-year average, 2001-2003)

Income tax rate: Ranges from 2.2% to 5.95%

Sales tax rate: None

Delaware dĕl´əwâr, –wər , river, c.280 mi (450 km) long, rising in the Catskill Mts., SE N.Y., in east and west branches, which meet at Hancock. It flows SE along the New York–Pennsylvania border to Port Jervis, N.Y., then between Pennsylvania and New Jersey generally S to Delaware Bay, an estuary (52 mi/84 km long) between New Jersey and Delaware. Dams and reservoirs (especially the Cannonsville, Pepacton, and Neversink) on the river's headstreams control flooding and provide water for New York City and New Jersey, but the diversion of water from the upper Delaware has increased the salinity of Delaware Bay. The Delaware River Basin Compact (formed 1961) regulates water use in the entire basin. The Delaware cuts through Kittatinny Mt. near Stroudsburg, Pa., forming the Delaware Water Gap , a scenic resort and recreation area. The lower Delaware, from Trenton, N.J. (the head of navigation), past Philadelphia, to Wilmington, Del., flows through a highly industrialized area where water pollution has been a problem. The Delaware has long been commercially and recreationally significant. Its tributaries include the highly industrial Lehigh River, which joins it at Easton, Pa., and the Schuylkill, which joins it at Philadelphia. The Chesapeake and Delaware Canal links it with Chesapeake Bay.