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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
Columbia Encyclopedia:
Delaware |
Facts and Figures
Area, 2,057 sq mi (5,328 sq km). Pop. (2000) 783,600, a 17.6% increase since the 1990 census. Capital, Dover. Largest city, Wilmington. Statehood, Dec. 7, 1787 (1st of the original 13 states to ratify the Constitution). Highest pt., 442 ft (135 m), New Castle co.; lowest pt., sea level. Nickname, First State. Motto, Liberty and Independence. State bird, blue hen chicken. State flower, peach blossom. State tree, American holly. Abbr., Del.; DE
Geography
Together with Eastern Shore Maryland and Virginia, Delaware occupies the Delmarva peninsula. It lies on the northeast of the peninsula, facing the Delaware River, which broadens into Delaware Bay; the bay in turn joins the Atlantic Ocean at Cape Henlopen. Delaware is sometimes called the Diamond State, a reference to its small size but relative wealth. With the Delaware River and Bay along its entire eastern edge, no place in the narrow state is far from water.
Many small rivers, often tidal, flow across the state, some E to the Delaware River and Bay and the Atlantic, others W across Maryland to the Chesapeake. In the north the waters of the Christina and Brandywine flow into the Delaware River; in the south the Nanticoke flows SW to Chesapeake Bay. The land is low-lying, from sand dunes in the south to rolling hills on the Pennsylvania border in the north; the average elevation is c.60 ft (18 m), and the highest point, NW of Wilmington on the Pennsylvania border, is only 440 ft (134 m). The capital is Dover, and the only large city is Wilmington.
Economy
Because of Delaware's lenient laws regulating business taxation and practice, some of the nation's largest corporations, especially banking and financial services companies, have major offices in N Delaware. Since the 1990s the finance and insurance sectors have become increasingly important for employment and income and now dominant the state's economy, although manufacturing and agriculture are still significant. The manufacturing, credit card, banking, and insurance industries are largely concentrated in the north, while farming is carried on mainly below the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal.
Chief agricultural products are broiler chickens, soybeans, corn, and dairy products. Potatoes and other vegetables are also grown. Delaware's small fishing industry harvests mainly clams, menhaden, oysters, and scup. Industries around Wilmington include the large chemicals and materials company that was founded by the Du Pont family in the 19th cent., and the biomedical, apparel, processed foods, and rubber and plastic products industries contribute significantly to the economy. Also economically important are Dover Air Force Base, the largest military facility in the state; tourism, mainly to the state's Atlantic beaches; and gambling.
Government, Politics, and Higher Education
Under the provisions of the 1897 constitution, the governor is elected to a four-year term. The state legislature, called the general assembly, is made up of a senate of 21 members and a house of representatives with 41 members. Delaware is represented in the U.S. Congress by two senators and one representative and has three electoral votes. Pierre S. Du Pont (1977-85) and Michael Castle (1985-93), both Republicans, were succeeded as governor by Democrats Thomas R. Carper (1993-2001), Ruth Ann Minner (2001-9), the state's first woman governor, and Jack Markell (2009-).
The main institutions of higher education are the Univ. of Delaware, at Newark; Delaware State Univ., at Dover; and a division of Widener Univ., at Wilmington.
History
Native Inhabitants and European Claims
Long before Europeans explored the Delaware area, it was inhabited by several Native American groups of the Delaware-notably the Nanticoke in the south and the Minqua in the north. In 1609, Henry Hudson, in the service of the Dutch East India Company, sailed into Delaware Bay. A year later the British captain Sir Samuel Argall, bound for the colony of Virginia, also sailed into the bay. Argall named one of the capes Cape La Warre after the governor of Virginia, Thomas West, Baron De la Warr.
From the time of its discovery, the region was contested by the Dutch and English. The first settlement was established by Dutch patroons, or proprietors, in partnership with the Dutch navigator David Pietersen de Vries; it was called Swanendael and was established (1631) on the site of the town of Lewes. However, within a year it was destroyed by a Native American attack. This attack notwithstanding, the Native Americans were generally friendly and willing to trade with the newcomers.
The Dutch West India Company, organized in 1623, was more interested in trade on the South River, as the Delaware was called at that time, than in settlement (the North River was the Hudson, in the Dutch colony of New Netherland). Several Dutchmen, interested in settling the area, put their services at the disposal of Sweden and colonized the area for that country. The best known of these was Peter Minuit, who had been governor of New Amsterdam (later New York). In 1637-38 Minuit directed the colonizing expedition for the Swedes that organized New Sweden. Fort Christina was founded in 1638 on the site of Wilmington and was named in honor of the queen of Sweden. The colony grew with the arrival of Swedish, Finnish, and Dutch settlers.
English colonists from Connecticut tried to establish trading posts in the Delaware River region and failed, but Dutch interests in the area were not disposed of as easily. Peter Stuyvesant, governor of New Netherland, sailed to the Delaware region in 1651 and established Fort Casimir on the Delaware shore at the site of present-day New Castle. The Swedes captured the fort by surprise in 1654, but their triumph was brief; Stuyvesant returned with an expedition in 1655 and conquered all New Sweden. The Dutch West India Company sold part of New Sweden to the Dutch city of Amsterdam in 1656 and the rest in 1663.
In 1664 the English seized the Dutch holdings on the Delaware. The Dutch recaptured the colony in 1673 and although they held Delaware only briefly, they set up three district courts that marked the beginning of Delaware's division into three counties. The colony was returned to England in 1674 and remained in its hands until the American Revolution.
The Three Lower Counties
The English Duke of York (later James II) annexed the region to New York, land granted him earlier by Charles II. In 1682 the duke transferred the claim to William Penn, who wanted to secure a navigable water route from his new colony of Pennsylvania to the ocean. The three counties of Delaware thus became the Three Lower Counties (or Territories, as Penn called them) of Pennsylvania. The individual counties were called New Castle, Kent (formerly St. Jones), and Sussex (formerly Hoornkill, also known as Whorekill, and Deale). The English proprietors of Maryland contested Penn's claim to Delaware, and the boundary dispute was not fully settled until 1750.
The inhabitants of the Delaware counties were at first unwilling to be joined to the "radical" Quaker colony of Pennsylvania or to have their affairs settled in Philadelphia. They finally accepted the Penn charter of 1701 after provisions were added giving the Three Lower Counties the right to a separate assembly, which first met in 1704. Delaware maintained quasi-autonomy until the American Revolution. The two colonies maintained strong ties, however, and two of Delaware's leading statesmen during the Revolution-Thomas McKean and John Dickinson-were also prominent in Pennsylvania affairs.
Revolution and Statehood
Although there were many Loyalists in Delaware just prior to the American Revolution, Delaware supported independence, with two of its three delegates to the Continental Congress-Caesar Rodney and Thomas McKean-voting for independence. George Read, the third Delaware delegate, voted against independence, fearing that Loyalist sentiment was too strong in the colonies. However, Read subsequently signed the Declaration of Independence.
In 1776 the colony of Delaware became a state, with a president as its chief executive. Regiments from the state rendered valiant service to the patriot cause, especially the Delaware 1st Regiment, which was nicknamed the Blue Hen's Chickens-originally because they carried with them gamecocks bred by a famous hen of Kent and later because they themselves showed the fighting quality of gamecocks. Delaware was a leader in the movement for revision of the form of government under the Articles of Confederation and in 1787 became the first state to ratify the new Constitution of the United States. The state constitution of 1776 was superseded by a new constitution in 1792, which provided that the chief executive be a governor rather than a president.
The late 18th cent. also marked the beginning of industry in Delaware with the establishment of gristmills on the Brandywine and Christina rivers. Wilmington became a center for the manufacture of cloth, paper, and flour-products that helped to build the industrial economy of N Delaware that flourished in the 19th cent. Shortly thereafter, in 1802, Eleuthère Irénée Du Pont established a gunpowder mill on the Brandywine River.
Pro- and Anti-Slavery Factionalism
Prior to the Civil War, Delaware was a slave state, but in the early 19th cent. the number of slaves in the state declined, while the number of free blacks increased. Many citizens of Delaware favored manumission of slaves and belonged to the American Colonization Society, but there were few who sympathized with the growing abolitionist movement and there was strong sentiment for separation of whites and blacks. In the Civil War, Delaware remained loyal to the Union, but pro-Southern feeling increased rather than diminished during the course of the war. Delaware refused to accept an emancipation proposal made by Lincoln in 1861 and did not ratify the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution until 1901. Delaware Democrats subsequently became divided, and the Republican Party emerged in 1905 to assume a leading political role for some years.
Maintaining a Rural-Urban Balance
A new state constitution in 1897 reflected the political strength as well as conservatism of Delaware's farmers through provisions that kept the political strength of Wilmington at a minimum and that of rural areas at a maximum. Many European immigrants came to the state in the late 19th and early 20th cent., settling in the Wilmington area. Southern Delaware's population continued to be made up largely of African Americans and persons of English origin.
Delaware's industries flourished during the 19th cent. as transportation facilities improved. Industry continued to expand in the 20th cent., especially during World Wars I and II. The chemical industry built up by the Du Pont family was broken up by a federal antitrust suit in 1912, but was nonetheless large enough to buy control of General Motors corporation in the 1920s and hold it for many years.
Racial tensions appeared in the state in the 1950s and 60s as Delaware's schools were racially integrated, and after the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968, rioting erupted in Wilmington. In the 1980s, Governor Pierre S. Du Pont fought to liberalize the state's usury laws and won. As a result, many large New York banks set up subsidiaries in Delaware (especially the Wilmington area), and thousands of jobs were created.
Bibliography
The standard history of the early period is Benjamin Ferris, A History of the Original Settlements on the Delaware (1846). See also Federal Writers' Project, Delaware: A Guide to the First State (1938, rev. ed. 1955, repr. 1973); J. A. Munroe, History of Delaware (2d ed. 1984); W. H. Williams, The First State: An Illustrated History of Delaware (1985).
Dictionary of Cultural Literacy: Geography:
Delaware |
State in the eastern United States bordered by Pennsylvania to the north, Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and Maryland to the west and south. Its capital is Dover, and its largest city is Wilmington.
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Delaware |
| State of Delaware | |||||
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| Nickname(s): The First State; The Small Wonder; Blue Hen State; The Diamond State |
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| Motto(s): Liberty and Independence | |||||
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| Demonym | Delawarean | ||||
| Capital | Dover | ||||
| Largest city | Wilmington | ||||
| Area | Ranked 49th in the U.S. | ||||
| - Total | 2,490 sq mi (6,452 km2) |
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| - Width | 30 miles (48 km) | ||||
| - Length | 96 miles (154 km) | ||||
| - % water | 21.5 | ||||
| - Latitude | 38° 27′ N to 39° 50′ N | ||||
| - Longitude | 75° 3′ W to 75° 47′ W | ||||
| Population | Ranked 45th in the U.S. | ||||
| - Total | 907,135 (2011 est)[1] | ||||
| - Density | 464/sq mi (179/km2) Ranked 6th in the U.S. |
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| - Median income | $50,152 (12th) | ||||
| Elevation | |||||
| - Highest point | Near the Ebright Azimuth[2][3][4] 447 ft (136.2 m) |
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| - Mean | 60 ft (20 m) | ||||
| - Lowest point | Atlantic Ocean[2] sea level |
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| Before statehood | Delaware Colony | ||||
| Admission to Union | December 7, 1787 (1st) | ||||
| Governor | Jack A. Markell (D) | ||||
| Lieutenant Governor | Matthew P. Denn (D) | ||||
| Legislature | General Assembly | ||||
| - Upper house | Senate | ||||
| - Lower house | House of Representatives | ||||
| U.S. Senators | Thomas R. Carper (D) Chris Coons (D) |
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| U.S. House delegation | John C. Carney, Jr. (D) (list) | ||||
| Time zone | Eastern: UTC-5/-4 | ||||
| Abbreviations | DE Del. US-DE | ||||
| Website | delaware.gov | ||||
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| Animate insignia | |
| Bird(s) | Blue Hen Chicken |
| Butterfly | Eastern Tiger Swallowtail |
| Fish | Weakfish |
| Flower(s) | Peach blossom |
| Insect | Ladybug |
| Tree | American Holly |
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| Inanimate insignia | |
| Beverage | Milk |
| Colors | Colonial Blue, Buff |
| Fossil | Belemnite |
| Mineral | Sillimanite |
| Slogan(s) | It's Good Being First |
| Soil | Greenwich |
| Song(s) | Our Delaware |
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Delaware (
i/ˈdɛləwɛər/ del-ə-wair)[5] is a U.S. state located on the Atlantic Coast in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It is bordered to the south and west by Maryland, to the east by New Jersey, and to the north by Pennsylvania.[6] The state takes its name from Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, an English nobleman and Virginia's first colonial governor, after whom what is now called Cape Henlopen was originally named.[7]
Delaware is located in the northeastern portion of the Delmarva Peninsula and is the 2nd least extensive, the 6th least populous, but the 6th most densely populated of the 50 United States. Delaware is divided into three counties. From north to south, these three counties are New Castle, Kent, and Sussex. While the southern two counties have historically been predominantly agricultural, New Castle County has been more industrialized.
The state ranks second in civilian scientists and engineers as a percentage of the workforce and number of patents issued to companies or individuals per 1,000 workers.[8] The history of the state's economic and industrial development is closely tied to the impact of the Du Pont family, founders and scions of E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, one of the world’s largest chemical companies.[9]
Before its coastline was first explored by Europeans in the 16th century, Delaware was inhabited by several groups of Native Americans, including the Lenape in the north and Nanticoke in the south. It was initially colonized by Dutch traders at Zwaanendael, located near the present town of Lewes, in 1631.[10] Delaware was one of the 13 colonies participating in the American Revolution and on December 7, 1787, became the first state to ratify the Constitution of the United States, thereby becoming known as The First State.
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Delaware is 96 miles (154 km) long and ranges from 9 miles (14 km) to 35 miles (56 km) across, totaling 1,954 square miles (5,060 km2), making it the second-smallest state in the United States after Rhode Island. Delaware is bounded to the north by Pennsylvania; to the east by the Delaware River, Delaware Bay, New Jersey and the Atlantic Ocean; and to the west and south by Maryland. Small portions of Delaware are also situated on the eastern side of the Delaware River sharing land boundaries with New Jersey. The state of Delaware, together with the Eastern Shore counties of Maryland and two counties of Virginia, form the Delmarva Peninsula, which stretches down the Mid-Atlantic Coast.
The definition of the northern boundary of the state is unusual. Most of the boundary between Delaware and Pennsylvania was originally defined by an arc extending 12 miles (19.3 km) from the cupola of the courthouse in the city of New Castle. This boundary is often referred to as the Twelve-Mile Circle.[11] This is the only nominally circular state boundary in the United States.
This border extends all the way east to the low-tide mark on the New Jersey shore, then continues south along the shoreline until it again reaches the 12-mile (19 km) arc in the south; then the boundary continues in a more conventional way in the middle of the main channel (thalweg) of the Delaware River. To the west, a portion of the arc extends past the easternmost edge of Maryland. The remaining western border runs slightly east of due south from its intersection with the arc. The Wedge of land between the northwest part of the arc and the Maryland border was claimed by both Delaware and Pennsylvania until 1921, when Delaware's claim was confirmed.
Delaware is on a level plain, with the lowest mean elevation of any state in the nation.[2] Its highest elevation, located at Ebright Azimuth, near Concord High School, does not rise fully 450 feet (140 m) above sea level.[2] The northernmost part of the state is part of the Appalachian Piedmont with hills and rolling surfaces. The fall line approximately follows the Robert Kirkwood Highway between Newark and Wilmington; south of this road is the Atlantic Coastal Plain with flat, sandy, and, in some parts, swampy ground. A ridge about 75 to 80 feet (23 to 24 m) in elevation extends along the western boundary of the state and separates between the watersheds that feed Delaware River and Bay to the east and the Chesapeake Bay to the west.
Since almost all of Delaware is a part of the Atlantic Coastal Plain, the effects of the ocean moderate its climate. The state is in a transitional zone between a humid subtropical climate and a continental climate. Despite its small size (roughly 100 miles (160 km) from its northernmost to southernmost points), there is significant variation in mean temperature and amount of snowfall between Sussex County and New Castle County. The southern portion of the state has a somewhat milder climate and a longer growing season than the northern portion of the state. Delaware's all time record high of 110 °F (43 °C) was recorded at Millsboro on July 21, 1930; the all time record low of −17 °F (−27 °C) was also recorded at Millsboro on January 17, 1893.
The transitional climate of Delaware supports a wide variety of vegetation. In the northern third of the state are found Northeastern coastal forests and mixed oak forests typical of the northeastern United States.[12] In the southern two-thirds of the state are found Middle Atlantic coastal forests.[12] Trap Pond State Park in Sussex County, for example, supports what may be one of the northernmost stands of bald cypress.
Delaware provides government subsidy support for the clean-up of property "lightly contaminated" by hazardous waste, the proceeds for which come from a tax on wholesale petroleum sales.[13]
Before Delaware was settled by European colonists, the area was home to the Eastern Algonquian tribes known as the Unami Lenape or Delaware throughout the Delaware valley, and the Nanticoke along the rivers leading into the Chesapeake Bay. The Unami Lenape in the Delaware Valley were closely related to Munsee Lenape tribes along the Hudson River. They had a settled hunting and agricultural society, and they rapidly became middlemen in an increasingly frantic fur trade with their ancient enemy, the Minqua or Susquehannock. With the loss of their lands on the Delaware River and the destruction of the Minqua by the Iroquois of the Five Nations in the 1670s, the remnants of the Lenape who wished to remain identified as such left the region and moved over the Alleghany Mountains by the mid-18th century. Generally, those who did not relocate out of the State of Delaware were baptized, became Christian and were grouped together with other persons of color in official records and in the minds of their non-Native American neighbors.
The Dutch were the first Europeans to settle in present-day Delaware in the Middle region by establishing a trading post at Zwaanendael, near the site of Lewes in 1631. Within a year all the settlers were killed in a dispute with area Indian tribes. In 1638 New Sweden, a Swedish trading post and colony, was established at Fort Christina (now in Wilmington) by Peter Minuit at the head of a group of Swedes, Finns and Dutch. The colony of New Sweden lasted for 17 years. In 1651, the Dutch, reinvigorated by the leadership of Peter Stuyvesant, established a fort at present-day New Castle, and in 1655 they conquered the New Sweden colony, annexing it into the Dutch New Netherland.[14] Only nine years later, in 1664, the Dutch were conquered by a fleet of English ships by Sir Robert Carr under the direction of James, the Duke of York. Fighting off a prior claim by Cecilius Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, Proprietor of Maryland, the Duke passed his somewhat dubious ownership on to William Penn in 1682. Penn strongly desired access to the sea for his Pennsylvania province and leased what then came to be known as the "Lower Counties on the Delaware" [14] from the Duke.
Penn established representative government and briefly combined his two possessions under one General Assembly in 1682. However, by 1704 the Province of Pennsylvania had grown so large that their representatives wanted to make decisions without the assent of the Lower Counties and the two groups of representatives began meeting on their own, one at Philadelphia, and the other at New Castle. Penn and his heirs remained proprietors of both and always appointed the same person Governor for their Province of Pennsylvania and their territory of the Lower Counties. The fact that Delaware and Pennsylvania shared the same governor was not unique. From 1703-1738, New York and New Jersey shared a governor.[15] Massachusetts and New Hampshire also shared a governor for some time.[16]
Dependent in early years on indentured labor, Delaware imported more slaves as the number of English immigrants decreased with better economic conditions in England. The colony became a slave society and cultivated tobacco as a cash crop, although English immigrants continued to arrive.
Like the other middle colonies, the Lower Counties on the Delaware initially showed little enthusiasm for a break with Britain. The citizenry had a good relationship with the Proprietary government, and generally were allowed more independence of action in their Colonial Assembly than in other colonies. Merchants at the port of Wilmington had trading ties with the British.
So it was that New Castle lawyer Thomas McKean denounced the Stamp Act in the strongest terms, and Kent County native John Dickinson became the "Penman of the Revolution." Anticipating the Declaration of Independence, Patriot leaders Thomas McKean and Caesar Rodney convinced the Colonial Assembly to declare itself separated from British and Pennsylvania rule on June 15, 1776. The person best representing Delaware's majority, George Read, could not bring himself to vote for a Declaration of Independence. Only the dramatic overnight ride of Caesar Rodney gave the delegation the votes needed to cast Delaware's vote for independence.
Initially led by John Haslet, Delaware provided one of the premier regiments in the Continental Army, known as the "Delaware Blues" and nicknamed the "Blue Hen Chickens." In August 1777, General Sir William Howe led a British army through Delaware on his way to a victory at the Battle of Brandywine and capture of the city of Philadelphia. The only real engagement on Delaware soil was the Battle of Cooch's Bridge, fought on September 3, 1777, at Cooch's Bridge in New Castle County.
Following the Battle of Brandywine, Wilmington was occupied by the British, and State President John McKinly was taken prisoner. The British remained in control of the Delaware River for much of the rest of the war, disrupting commerce and providing encouragement to an active Loyalist portion of the population, particularly in Sussex County. Because the British promised slaves of rebels freedom for fighting with them, escaped slaves flocked north to join their lines.[17]
Following the American Revolution, statesmen from Delaware were among the leading proponents of a strong central United States with equal representation for each state.
Many colonial settlers came to Delaware from Maryland and Virginia, which had been experiencing a population boom. The economies of these colonies were chiefly based on tobacco culture and were increasingly dependent on slave labor for its intensive cultivation. Most of the English colonists arrived as indentured servants, hiring themselves out as laborers for a fixed period to pay for their passage. In the early years the line between indentured servants and African slaves or laborers was fluid. Most of the free African-American families in Delaware before the Revolution had migrated from Maryland to find more affordable land. They were descendants chiefly of relationships or marriages between servant women and enslaved, servant or free African or African-American men.[18] As the flow of indentured laborers to the colony decreased with improving economic conditions in England, more slaves were imported for labor.
At the end of the colonial period, the number of enslaved people in Delaware began to decline. Shifts in the agriculture economy from tobacco to mixed farming created less need for slaves' labor. Local Methodists and Quakers encouraged slaveholders to free their slaves following the American Revolution, and many did so in a surge of individual manumissions for idealistic reasons. By 1810 three-quarters of all blacks in Delaware were free. When John Dickinson freed his slaves in 1777, he was Delaware's largest slave owner with 37 slaves. By 1860 the largest slaveholder owned only 16 slaves.[19]
Although attempts to abolish slavery failed by narrow margins in the legislature, in practical terms, the state had mostly ended the practice. By the 1860 census on the verge of the Civil War, 91.7 percent of the black population, or nearly 20,000 people, were free.[20][21]
The independent black denomination was chartered by freed slave Peter Spencer in 1813 as the "Union Church of Africans". This followed the 1793 establishment of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, which had ties to the Methodist Episcopal Church until 1816. Spencer built a church in Wilmington for the new denomination.[22] This was renamed the African Union First Colored Methodist Protestant Church and Connection, more commonly known as the A.U.M.P. Church. Begun by Spencer in 1814, the annual gathering of the Big August Quarterly still draws people together in a religious and cultural festival, the oldest such cultural festival in the nation.
At the onset of the Civil War, Delaware was only nominally a slave state, and it remained in the Union. Delaware voted against secession on January 3, 1861. As the governor said, Delaware had been the first state to embrace the Union by ratifying the Constitution and would be the last to leave it. While most Delaware citizens who fought in the war served in the regiments of the state, some served in companies on the Confederate side in Maryland and Virginia Regiments. Delaware is notable for being the only slave state from which no Confederate regiments or militia groups were assembled. It freed the remaining 1,000 or so Delaware slaves with the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution in December 1865.
| Historical populations | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Census | Pop. | %± | |
| 1790 | 59,096 |
|
|
| 1800 | 64,273 | 8.8% | |
| 1810 | 72,674 | 13.1% | |
| 1820 | 72,749 | 0.1% | |
| 1830 | 76,748 | 5.5% | |
| 1840 | 78,085 | 1.7% | |
| 1850 | 91,532 | 17.2% | |
| 1860 | 112,216 | 22.6% | |
| 1870 | 125,015 | 11.4% | |
| 1880 | 146,608 | 17.3% | |
| 1890 | 168,493 | 14.9% | |
| 1900 | 184,735 | 9.6% | |
| 1910 | 202,322 | 9.5% | |
| 1920 | 223,003 | 10.2% | |
| 1930 | 238,380 | 6.9% | |
| 1940 | 266,505 | 11.8% | |
| 1950 | 318,085 | 19.4% | |
| 1960 | 446,292 | 40.3% | |
| 1970 | 548,104 | 22.8% | |
| 1980 | 594,338 | 8.4% | |
| 1990 | 666,168 | 12.1% | |
| 2000 | 783,600 | 17.6% | |
| 2010 | 897,934 | 14.6% | |
| Sources: 1910-2010[23] | |||
The United States Census Bureau estimates that the population of Delaware was 907,135 on July 1, 2011, a 1.02% increase since the 2010 United States Census.[1]
According to the 2010 U.S. Census, Delaware had a population of 897,934. In terms of race and ethnicity, the state was 68.9% White (65.3% Non-Hispanic White Alone), 21.4% Black or African American, 0.5% American Indian and Alaska Native, 3.2% Asian, 0.0% Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, 3.4% from Some Other Race, and 2.7% from Two or More Races. Hispanics and Latinos of any race made up 8.2% of the population.[24]
Delaware is the sixth most densely populated state, with a population density of 442.6 people per square mile, 356.4 per square mile more than the national average, and ranking 45th in population. Only the states of Delaware, West Virginia, Vermont, Maine, North Dakota, and Wyoming do not have a single city with a population over 100,000 as of the 2007 census estimates.[25] The center of population of Delaware is located in New Castle County, in the town of Townsend.[26]
As of 2000, 91% of Delaware residents age 5 and older speak only English at home; 5% speak Spanish. French is the third most spoken language at 0.7%, followed by Chinese at 0.5% and German at 0.5%.
Legislation had been proposed in both the House and the Senate in Delaware to designate English as the official language.[27][28] Neither bill was passed in the legislature.
The religious affiliations of the people of Delaware are:
(Source: American Religious Identification Survey, City University of New York[dead link])
As of the year 2000, The Association of Religion Data Archives[29] reported that the three largest denominational groups in Delaware are Catholic, Mainline Protestant, and Evangelical Protestant. The Catholic Church has the highest number of adherents in Delaware (at 151,740), followed by the United Methodist Church with 59,471 members reported and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), reporting 14,880 adherents. The religious body with the largest number of congregations is the United Methodist Church (with 162 congregations) followed by the Catholic Church (with 46 congregations).
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Wilmington and the Episcopal Diocese of Delaware oversee the parishes within their denominations. The A.U.M.P. Church, the oldest African-American denomination in the nation, was founded in Wilmington. It still has a substantial presence in the state. Reflecting new immigrant populations, an Islamic mosque has been built in the Ogletown area, and a Hindu temple in Hockessin.
The gross state product of Delaware in 2010 was $62.3 billion.[30]
| DE County | March 2010 | March 2011 |
|---|---|---|
| New Castle | 229,000 | 216,000 |
| Sussex | 323,000 | 296,000 |
| Kent | 186,000 | 178,000 |
The per capita personal income was $34,199, ranking 9th in the nation. In 2005, the average weekly wage was $937, ranking 7th in the nation.[32]
In common with many counties in the United States, each of the three Delaware counties have experienced a year-on-year decreasing in the sales price of new and existing homes when comparing 2010 to 2011.[31]
Delaware's agricultural output consists of poultry, nursery stock, soybeans, dairy products and corn. Its industrial outputs include chemical products, automobiles, processed foods, paper products, and rubber and plastic products. Delaware's economy generally outperforms the national average of the United States.
As of January 2011, the state's unemployment rate was 8.5%.[33] The state's largest employers are:
The Dover Air Force Base, located next to the state capital of Dover, is one of the largest Air Force bases in the country and is a major employer in Delaware. In addition to its other responsibilities in the USAF Air Mobility Command, this air base serves as the entry point and mortuary for American military personnel, and some U.S. government civilians, who die overseas.
Over 50% of U.S. publicly traded corporations and 60% of the Fortune 500 companies are incorporated in Delaware;[38] the state's attractiveness as a corporate haven is largely because of its business-friendly corporation law. Franchise taxes on Delaware corporations supply about one-fifth of its state revenue.[39] Although Delaware is ranked first tax haven in the world by Tax Justice Network,[40] it is not listed on the OECD's 2009 "Black List", despite objections of Luxembourg's and Switzerland's authorities.[41]
Title 4, chapter 7 of the Delaware Code stipulates that alcoholic liquor only be sold in specifically licensed establishments, and only between 9:00 AM and 1:00 AM.[42] Until 2003, Delaware was among the several states enforcing blue laws and banned sale of liquor on Sunday.[43]
The transportation system in Delaware is under the governance and supervision of the Delaware Department of Transportation, also known as "DelDOT".[45][46] Funding for DelDOT projects is drawn, in part, from the Delaware Transportation Trust Fund, established in 1987 to help stabilize transportation funding; the availability of the Trust led to a gradual separation of DelDOT operations from other Delaware state operations.[47] DelDOT manages programs such as a Delaware Adopt-a-Highway program, major road route snow removal, traffic control infrastructure (signs and signals), toll road management, Delaware Division of Motor Vehicles, the Delaware Transit Corporation (branded as "DART First State", the state government public transportation organization), among others. Almost 90 percent of the state's public roadway miles are under the direct maintenance of DelDOT which far exceeds the United States national average of 20 percent for state department of transportation maintenance responsibility; the remaining public road miles are under the supervision of individual municipalities.
The "DART First State" public transportation system was named "Most Outstanding Public Transportation System" in 2003 by the American Public Transportation Association. Coverage of the system is broad within northern New Castle County with close association to major highways in Kent and Sussex counties. The system includes bus, subsidized passenger rail operated by Philadelphia transit agency SEPTA, and subsidized taxi and paratransit modes. The paratransit system, consisting of a state-wide door-to-door bus service for the elderly and disabled, has been described by a Delaware state report as "the most generous paratransit system in the United States."[47] As of 2012[update], fees for the paratransit service have not changed since 1988.[47]
One major branch of the U.S. Interstate Highway System, Interstate 95, crosses Delaware southwest-to-northeast across New Castle County. In addition to I-95, there are six U.S. highways that serve Delaware: U.S. Route 9, U.S. Route 13, U.S. Route 40, U.S. Route 113, U.S. Route 202, and U.S. Route 301. There are also several state highways that cross the state of Delaware; a few of them include Delaware Route 1, Delaware Route 9, and Delaware Route 404. U.S. 13 and DE Rt 1 are primary north-south highways connecting Wilmington and Pennsylvania with Maryland, with DE 1 serving as the main route between Wilmington and the Delaware beaches. DE Rt. 9 is a north-south highway connecting Dover and Wilmington via a scenic route along the Delaware Bay. U.S. 40, is a primary east-west route, connecting Maryland with New Jersey. DE Rt. 404 is another primary east-west highway connecting the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in Maryland with the Delaware beaches. The state also operates two toll highways, the Delaware Turnpike, which is Interstate 95, between Maryland and New Castle and the Korean War Veterans Memorial Highway, which is DE Rt. 1, between Wilmington and Dover.
A bicycle route, Delaware Bicycle Route 1, spans the north-south length of the state from the Maryland border in Fenwick Island to the Pennsylvania border north of Montchanin. It is the first of several signed bike routes planned in Delaware.[48]
Delaware has around 1,450 bridges, ninety-five percent of which are under the supervision of DelDOT. About 30 percent of all Delaware bridges were built prior to 1950 and about 60 percent of the number are included in the National Bridge Inventory. Some bridges not under DelDOT supervision includes the four bridges on the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, which are under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the Delaware Memorial Bridge, which is under the bi-state Delaware River and Bay Authority.
It has been noted that the tar and chip composition of secondary roads in Sussex County make them more prone to deterioration than asphalt roadways found in the rest of the state.[49] Among these roads, Sussex (county road) 238 is among the most problematic.[49]
There are three ferries that operate in the state of Delaware:
Amtrak has two stations in Delaware along the Northeast Corridor; the relatively quiet Newark Rail Station in Newark, and the busier Wilmington Rail Station in Wilmington. The Northeast Corridor is also served by SEPTA's Wilmington/Newark Line of Regional Rail, which serves Claymont, Wilmington, Churchmans Crossing, and Newark. The major freight railroad in Delaware is the Class I railroad Norfolk Southern, which provides service to most of Delaware. It connects with two shortline railroads, the Delaware Coast Line Railroad and the Maryland and Delaware Railroad, which serve local customers in Sussex County. Another Class I railroad, CSX, passes through northern New Castle County parallel to the Amtrak Northeast Corridor. CSX connects with the freight/heritage operation, the Wilmington and Western Railroad, based in Wilmington.
Delaware is the only state in the United States without commercial air service. New Castle Airport near Wilmington has been served by commercial airlines in the past, the last being Skybus Airlines, which provided service to Columbus, Ohio and Greensboro, North Carolina from March 7, 2008[50] until its bankruptcy on April 5, 2008.
Delaware is centrally situated in the Northeast Corridor region of cities along I-95. Therefore, Delaware commercial airline passengers most frequently use Philadelphia International Airport (PHL) and Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI) for domestic and international transit. Residents of Sussex County will also use Wicomico Regional Airport, as it is located less than 10 miles (16 km) from the Delaware border. Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) and Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) are also within a 100-mile (160 km) radius of New Castle County.
The large Dover Air Force Base of the USAF Air Mobility Command is located in the central part of the state, and it is the home of the 436th Airlift Wing and the 512th Airlift Wing.
Other general aviation airports in Delaware include Summit Airport near Middletown, Delaware Airpark near Cheswold, and Sussex County Airport near Georgetown.
Delaware's fourth and current constitution, adopted in 1897, provides for executive, judicial and legislative branches.
The Delaware General Assembly consists of a House of Representatives with 41 members and a Senate with 21 members. It sits in Dover, the state capital. Representatives are elected to two-year terms, while senators are elected to four-year terms. The Senate confirms judicial and other nominees appointed by the governor.
Delaware's U.S. Senators are Thomas R. Carper (Democrat) and Chris Coons (Democrat). Delaware's single U.S. Representative is John Carney (Democrat).
The Delaware Constitution establishes a number of courts:
Minor non-constitutional courts include the Justice of the Peace Courts and Aldermen's Courts.
Significantly, Delaware has one of the few remaining Courts of Chancery in the nation, which has jurisdiction over equity cases, the vast majority of which are corporate disputes, many relating to mergers and acquisitions. The Court of Chancery and the Supreme Court have developed a worldwide reputation for rendering concise opinions concerning corporate law which generally (but not always) grant broad discretion to corporate boards of directors and officers. In addition, the Delaware General Corporation Law, which forms the basis of the Courts' opinions, is widely regarded as giving great flexibility to corporations to manage their affairs. For these reasons, Delaware is considered to have the most business-friendly legal system in the United States; therefore a great number of companies are incorporated in Delaware, including 60% of the companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange.[51] Delaware was the last US state to use judicial corporal punishment, in 1952.[52]
The executive branch is headed by the Governor of Delaware. The present governor is Jack A. Markell (Democrat), who took office January 20, 2009. The lieutenant governor is Matthew P. Denn. The governor presents a "State of the State" speech to a joint session of the Delaware legislature annually.[53]
Delaware is subdivided into three counties; from north to south they are New Castle, Kent County and Sussex. This is the fewest among all states, with Rhode Island having five counties. Each county elects its own legislative body (known in New Castle and Sussex counties as County Council, and in Kent County as Levy Court), which deal primarily in zoning and development issues. Most functions which are handled on a county-by-county basis in other states — such as court and law enforcement — have been centralized in Delaware, leading to a significant concentration of power in the Delaware state government. The counties were historically divided into hundreds, which were used as tax reporting and voting districts until the 1960s, but now serve no administrative role, their only current official legal use being in real-estate title descriptions.[54]
| Year | Republican | Democratic |
|---|---|---|
| 2008 | 37.37% 152,356 | 62.63% 255,394 |
| 2004 | 45.75% 171,660 | 53.35% 200,152 |
| 2000 | 41.90% 137,288 | 54.96% 180,068 |
| 1996 | 36.58% 99,062 | 51.82% 140,955 |
| 1992 | 35.33% 102,313 | 43.52% 126,054 |
| 1988 | 55.88% 139,639 | 43.48% 108,647 |
| 1984 | 59.78% 152,190 | 39.93% 101,656 |
| 1980 | 47.21% 111,252 | 44.87% 105,754 |
| 1976 | 46.57% 109,831 | 51.98% 122,596 |
| 1972 | 59.60% 140,357 | 39.18% 92,283 |
| 1968 | 45.12% 96,714 | 41.61% 89,194 |
| 1964 | 38.78% 78,078 | 60.95% 122,704 |
| 1960 | 49.00% 96,373 | 50.63% 99,590 |
The Democratic Party holds a plurality of registrations in Delaware. Until the 2000 presidential election, the state tended to be a Presidential bellwether, sending its three electoral votes to the winning candidate since 1952. This trend ended in 2000 and continued in 2004, when the state voted for the losing Democratic presidential candidate: in the 2000 election Delaware's electoral votes went to Al Goreand in 2004, John Kerry won Delaware by eight percentage points. In 2008, Democrat Barack Obama defeated Republican John McCain in Delaware 62.63% to 37.37%. Obama's running mate was Joe Biden, who had represented Delaware in the United States Senate since 1973.
Delaware's swing to the Democrats is in part due to a strong Democratic trend in New Castle County, home to 55 percent of Delaware's population--more the population of Kent and Sussex counties combined (the two smaller counties have only 359,000 people between them to New Castle's 535,000). New Castle has not gone Republican in a presidential election since 1988. In 1992, 2000 and 2004, the Republican presidential candidate carried both Kent and Sussex but lost by double-digits each time in New Castle, which was a large enough margin to swing the state to the Democrats. New Castle also elects a substantial majority of the legislature; 27 of the 41 state house districts and 14 of the 21 state senate districts are based in New Castle.
The Democrats have held the governorship since 1993, having won the last four gubernatorial elections in a row. Democrats presently hold eight of the nine statewide elected offices, while the Republicans hold only one statewide office, State Auditor.
Each of the 50 states of the United States has passed some form of freedom of information legislation, which provides a mechanism for the general public to request information of the government.[citation needed] In 2011, Delaware passed legislation placing a 15 business day time limit on addressing freedom-of-information requests, to either produce information or an explanation of why such information would take longer than this time to produce.[55]
Delaware has six different income tax brackets, ranging from 2.2% to 5.95%. The state does not assess sales tax on consumers. The state does, however, impose a tax on the gross receipts of most businesses. Business and occupational license tax rates range from 0.096% to 1.92%, depending on the category of business activity.
Delaware does not assess a state-level tax on real or personal property. Real estate is subject to county property taxes, school district property taxes, vocational school district taxes, and, if located within an incorporated area, municipal property taxes.
Gambling provides significant revenue to the state. For instance, the casino at Delaware Park Racetrack provided more than $100 million USD to the state in 2010.[56]
Wilmington is the state's largest city and its economic hub. It is located within commuting distance of both Philadelphia and Baltimore. All regions of Delaware are enjoying phenomenal growth, with Dover and the beach resorts expanding at a rapid rate.
Ranked by per capita income
Delaware was the origin of Belton v. Gebhart, one of the four cases which was combined into Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court of the United States decision that led to the end of segregated public schools. Significantly, Belton was the only case in which the state court found for the plaintiffs, thereby ruling that segregation was unconstitutional.
Unlike many states, Delaware's educational system is centralized in a state Superintendent of Education, with local school boards retaining control over taxation and some curriculum decisions.
As of 2011[update], the Delaware Department of Education had authorized the founding of 25 charter schools in the state, among them one all-girls facility.[57]
All teachers in the State's public school districts are unionized.[58] As of January 2012[update], none of the State's charter schools are members of a teachers union.[58] One of the State's teachers' unions is Delaware State Education Association (DSEA), which President as of January 2012 is Frederika Jenner.[58]
Delaware's sister state in Japan is Miyagi Prefecture.[59]
There are no network broadcast-television stations operating solely in Delaware. A local PBS station from Philadelphia (but licensed to Wilmington), WHYY-TV, maintains a studio and broadcasting facility in Wilmington and Dover, while ION Television affiliate WPPX is licensed to Wilmington but maintains their offices in Philadelphia and their digital transmitter outside of that city and an analog tower in New Jersey. Philadelphia's ABC affiliate, WPVI-TV, maintains a news bureau in downtown Wilmington. The northern part of the state is served by network stations in Philadelphia and the southern part by network stations in Baltimore and Salisbury, Maryland. Salisbury's CBS affiliate, WBOC-TV, maintains bureaus in Dover and Milton.
While Delaware has no places designated as national parks,[60] national seashores, national battlefields, national memorials, or national monuments, it does have several museums, wildlife refuges, parks, houses, lighthouses, and other historic places. Delaware is home to the second longest twin span suspension bridge in the world, the Delaware Memorial Bridge.
Rehoboth Beach, together with the towns of Lewes, Dewey Beach, Bethany Beach, South Bethany, and Fenwick Island, comprise Delaware's beach resorts. Rehoboth Beach often bills itself as "The Nation's Summer Capital" because it is a frequent summer vacation destination for Washington, D.C., residents as well as visitors from Maryland, Virginia, and in lesser numbers, Pennsylvania. Vacationers are drawn for many reasons, including the town's charm, artistic appeal, nightlife, and tax free shopping.
Delaware is home to several festivals, fairs, and events. Some of the more notable festivals are the Riverfest held in Seaford, the World Championship Punkin Chunkin held at various locations throughout the county since 1986, the Rehoboth Beach Chocolate Festival, the Bethany Beach Jazz Funeral to mark the end of summer, the Apple Scrapple Festival held in Bridgeville, the Rehoboth Beach Jazz Festival, the Sea Witch Halloween Festival and Parade in Rehoboth Beach, the Rehoboth Beach Independent Film Festival, the Nanticoke Indian Pow Wow in Oak Orchard, and the Return Day Parade held after every election in Georgetown.
| Club | Sport | League |
|---|---|---|
| Wilmington Blue Rocks | Baseball | Minor League Baseball |
| Delaware Griffins | Football | Women's Professional Football League |
| Central Delaware SA Future | Soccer | Women's Premier Soccer League |
| Delaware Dynasty | Soccer | USL Premier Development League |
| Diamond State Roller Girls | Roller Derby | Women's Flat Track Derby Association |
As Delaware has no franchises in the major America professional sports leagues, many Delawareans follow either Philadelphia or Baltimore teams, depending on their location within the state. The University of Delaware's football team has a large following throughout the state with the Delaware State University and Wesley College teams also enjoying a smaller degree of support.
Delaware is home to Dover International Speedway and Dover Downs. DIS, also known as the Monster Mile, hosts two NASCAR races each year. Dover Downs is a popular harness racing facility. It is the only co-located horse and car-racing facility in the nation, with the Dover Downs track located inside the DIS track.
Delaware has been home to professional wrestling outfit Combat Zone Wrestling (CZW). CZW has been affiliated with the annual Tournament of Death and ECWA with its annual Super 8 Tournament.
Delaware is home to the Diamond State Games, an amateur Olympic-style sports festival. The event is open to athletes of all ages and is also open to residents beyond the borders of Delaware. The Diamond State Games were created in 2001 and participation levels average roughly 2500 per year in 12 contested sports.
 |
This section relies largely or entirely upon a single source. Please help improve this article by introducing citations to additional sources. Discussion about the problems with the sole source used may be found on the talk page. (November 2011) |
According to a 2011 news publication, "abuse of prescription narcotics and anti-anxiety drugs has killed someone, on average, every other day over the last two years", with a death toll greater than that from either traffic accidents or abuse of traditional addictive substances (e.g. cocaine, heroin, alcohol).[61] Some of the prescription material reaches the market through theft from retail outlets, most are provided through a doctor's prescription.[61]
As of October 2011, Delaware criminalized "bath salts", placing it on the "state's list of banned substances".[62]
Delaware is also the name of a Native American group (called in their own language Lenni Lenape) that was influential in the colonial period of the United States and is today headquartered in Cheswold, Kent County, Delaware. A band of the Nanticoke tribe of American Indians today resides in Sussex County and is headquartered in Millsboro, Sussex County, Delaware.
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| First | List of U.S. states by date of statehood Ratified Constitution on December 7, 1787 (1st) |
Succeeded by Pennsylvania |
Coordinates: 39°00′N 75°30′W / 39°N 75.5°W
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Translations:
Delaware |
Français (French)
n. - Delaware
Deutsch (German)
n. - Delaware
Português (Portuguese)
n. - Delaware
Español (Spanish)
n. - Delaware
中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
特拉华州
中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 德拉威州
한국어 (Korean)
델라웨어 (미국 동부의 주; (약) Del.; 주도 Dover; 속칭 the Diamond State, the First State, the Blue Hen State), (북미 인디언의) 델라웨어족, 미국산(식육용의) 닭
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| Dictionary of Cultural Literacy: Geography. The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Edited by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Joseph F. Kett, and James Trefil. Copyright © 2002 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin. All rights reserved. Read more |
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Mentioned in
State of Delaware
