History of Delaware
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 1680, 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 Delaware (also known as Lenni Lenape), Susquehanna, and other Native American tribes.[1]
Dutch and Swedish colonies
The Delaware River 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" (High Island), now Burlington Island, opposite Burlington, New Jersey; Fort Nassau, near Gloucester City, New Jersey in 1626; and at Zwaanendael, now Lewes, Delaware in 1631.[2] Peter Minuit was the Dutch Director-General of the New Netherlands 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 falling out with the directors of the Dutch West India Company, was recalled from the New Netherland, and promptly made his services available to his many friends in Sweden, then a major power in European politics. They established a New Sweden Company 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, Delaware. 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, Delaware County, Pennsylvania, where he intended to concentrate the settlements.
While the Dutch settlement at Zwaanendael ("swan valley"), 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, Delaware. Three years later, in 1654, Johan Rising, 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.[3]
British colony
It was not long, though, before the Dutch too were forcibly removed by the English, who asserted its 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 the 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 the 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."
William 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 engagement began August 30, about two miles south of Cooch's Bridge (located in present-day Newark). 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 after 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.
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 Constitution.
The oldest black 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.
Population
| Census Year | New Castle County population |
percentage of state population |
Kent County population |
percentage of state population |
Sussex County population |
percentage of state population |
Delaware total | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1790 | 19,688 | 33% | 18,920 | 32% | 20,488 | 35% | 59,096 | ||||
| 1800 | 25,361 | 39% | 19,554 | 30% | 19,358 | 30% | 64,273 | ||||
| 1810 | 24,429 | 34% | 20,495 | 28% | 27,750 | 38% | 72,674 | ||||
| 1820 | 27,899 | 38% | 20,793 | 29% | 24,057 | 33% | 72,749 | ||||
| 1830 | 29,720 | 39% | 19,913 | 26% | 27,115 | 35% | 76,748 | ||||
| 1840 | 33,120 | 42% | 19,872 | 25% | 25,093 | 32% | 78,085 |
Delaware in the Civil War
During the American Civil War, Delaware was a slave state that remained in the Union (Delaware voters voted not to secede on January 3, 1861). 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.
The government of Delaware never formally abolished slavery; however a large portion of the state's slave owners voluntarily freed their slaves.
Two months before the end of the Civil War, on February 18, 1865, Delaware voted to reject the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution and so voted unsuccessfully to continue slavery beyond the Civil War. Delaware symbolically ratified the amendment on February 12, 1901–40 years after Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. Slavery ended in Delaware only when the Thirteenth Amendment took effect in December 1865. Delaware also rejected the 14th amendment during the Reconstruction Era.
After the Civil War
Delaware was not included in Reconstruction; thus, its post-Civil War transition went smoothly.
References
- ↑ Johnson, Amandus The Indians and Their Culture as Described in Swedish and Dutch Records (1917)
- ↑ Gehring, Charles T. (1995), "Hodie Mihi, Cras Tibi", New Sweden in America Swedish-Dutch relations in the Delaware Valley (University of Delaware Press), ISBN 0-87413-520-6
- ↑ Johnson, Amandus Johan Classon Rising: The last governor of New Sweden (1915)
Primary sources
- Hancock, Harold Bell. (1961). Delaware during the Civil War. Wilmington, Delaware: Historical Society of Delaware. ISBN 0-924117-24-9.
- Hoffecker, Carol E. (2004). Democracy in Delaware. Wilmington, Delaware: Cedar Tree Books. ISBN 1-892142-23-6.
- Martin, Roger A. (1984). A History of Delaware Through its Governors. Wilmington, Delaware: McClafferty Press.
- Martin, Roger A. (1995). Memoirs of the Senate. Newark, DE: Roger A. Martin.
- Munroe, John A. (2004). The Philadelawareans. Newark, Delaware: University of Delaware Press. ISBN 0-87413-872-8.
- Munroe, John A. (1993). History of Delaware. Newark, Delaware: University of Delaware Press. ISBN 0-87413-493-5.
- Scharf, John Thomas (1888). History of Delaware 1609-1888. 2 vols. Philadelphia: L. J. Richards & Co.
- Wilson, Emerson. (1969). Forgotten Heroes of Delaware. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Deltos Publishing Company.
Additional sources
- Borden, Morton; The Federalism of James A. Bayard (Columbia University Press, 1955)
- Delaware Federal Writers' Project; Delaware: A Guide to the First State (famous WPA guidebook 1938)
- Johnson, Amandus The Swedes in America 1638-1900: Vol. I, The Swedes on the Delaware 1638-1664. (1914)
- Johnson, Amandus The Swedish Settlements on the Delaware 1638-1664, Volume II (1927)
- Myers, Albert Cook ed., Narratives of Early Pennsylvania, West New Jersey, and Delaware, 1630-1707 (1912)
- Ward, Christopher Dutch and Swedes on the Delaware, 1609- 1664 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1930)
- Wiener, Roberta and James R. Arnold. Delaware: The History Of Delaware Colony, 1638-1776 (2004)
- Weslager, C. A. New Sweden on the Delaware, 1638-1655 (The Middle Atlantic Press, Wilmington. 1988)
External links
- Boston Public Library, Map Center. Maps of Delaware, various dates.
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