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The
History of Delaware is the
story of a small American state, in the middle of
the heart of the nation, and yet until recently
often isolated and even invisible to outsiders.
Still, because of its geographic location and
settlement pattern it has been evenly divided on the
key issues in American history and has often seemed
like the United States in miniature.
Delaware is
made up of three counties that have been well established
since 1680, before the time of
William Penn. Each has had its own unique settlement
history and their 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 and all
of the state has existed in the looming presence 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.
Dutch and Swedish colonies
The
Delaware River watershed was claimed by the
British 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 in 1624 at "Hooghe Eyland" (High
Island), now Burlington Island, opposite
Burlington,
New Jersey, in 1626 at Fort
Nassau, now
Gloucester City, New Jersey,
and at Zwaanendael, now
Lewes, Delaware in 1631.
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
Netherlands, 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,
Pennsylvania, where he intended to concentrate the
settlements.
While the
Dutch settlement at
Zwaanendael, or present day
Lewes, was soon destroyed in a war with native
Americans, the Dutch never gave up their claim to the area
and, in 1651, under the leadership of
Peter Stuyvesant, built Fort
Casimir, now New Castle,
Delaware. Three years later, in 1654,
Johan Rising, the Swedish
governor captured Fort Casimir from Dutch. For the Swedes,
this was a catastrophic miscalculation as the next summer,
1655, an enraged Stuyvesant
led another Dutch expedition to the
Delaware River, attacked all
the Swedish communities and forcibly ended the
New Sweden colony, incorporating
the whole area back into the New
Netherland colony.
British colony
It wasn't
long, though, before the Dutch as well were forcibly removed
by the British,
asserting their earlier claim. In 1664, James, the Duke of
York, and brother of King Charles II, outfitted an
expedition that easily ousted the Dutch from both the
Delaware and Hudson Rivers, leaving the Duke of York the
proprietary authority in the whole area.
However,
Cæcilius
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. The claim was not
pressed in deference to the royal will of
Charles II to please
his brother, James, Duke of
York, who having won the area in war, and felt justified
in his ownership of it. The area was administered from
New York as a part of
James' New York colony. At this point
William Penn enters the picture
and is 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, and
persuaded James to lease him the whole 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 began by the
heirs agreeing to the survey performed by
Charles Mason and
Jeremiah Dixon between 1763
and 1767, which resulted in the famous
Mason-Dixon line. The final
adjudication of the settlement did not occur until the very
eve of the American
Revolution and was certainly 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 tried to establish a combined
assembly for his whole 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 meeting place also 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 and so there was a mutual agreement
in 1704 for the two assemblies to meet separately from
thenceforth. The Lower Counties did continue to share a
governor, but the Province of
Pennsylvania was never merged with the Lower Counties.
The
Mason-Dixon line now forms
the whole boundary between Delaware and
Maryland, and is known as 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
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
Pennsylvania and Delaware.
American Revolution
The state
was invaded and partially occupied by the British from
September 1777 until June 1778. The battle was fought
between British and Hessian troops
under Generals Charles
Cornwallis, William Howe,
and Wilhelm von Knyphausen
and the colonial troops under General
George Washington.
The
engagement began August 30, about two miles south of the
bridge. The Americans harried the lead forces of the
British Army. However, the
roughly 700 colonials were greatly outmanned and outgunned
Washington’s troops and slowly drove them 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.
State of Delaware
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 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.
The
government of Deleware never formally abolished slavery;
however a large portion of the states slaveowners
voluntarily freed their slaves.
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. While most
Delaware citizens that fought in the War served in the
regiments the State answered Lincoln's call to arms with,
some did in fact serve in Delaware companies on the
Confederate side in Maryland and Virginia Regiments.
Two months
before the end of the Civil War, however, Delaware voted on
February 18, 1865
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 of 1865.
Delaware also rejected the
14th amendment during the
Reconstruction Era.
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