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{{Short description|History of the US state of Delaware}}
{{more sources|date=May 2024}}
'''The history of [[Delaware]]''' as a political entity dates back to the early colonization of [[North America]] by European settlers. Delaware is made up of three counties established in 1638, before the time of [[William Penn]]. Each county had its own settlement history. The state's early colonists tended to identify more closely with their county than Delaware as a whole. Large parts of southern and western Delaware were thought to have been{{clarify|reason=Unintentionally hilarious. Cartographic uncertainty or political ascertainment?|date=July 2015}} in [[Maryland]] until 1767. The state has existed in the wide economic and political circle of the nearby [[Pennsylvania|Pennsylvanian]] city of [[Philadelphia]].{{clarify|date=January 2023}}▼
{{Use mdy dates|date=December 2023}}
▲'''The history of [[Delaware]]''' as a political entity dates back to the early colonization of [[North America]] by European settlers. Delaware is made up of three counties established in 1638, before the time of [[William Penn]]. Each county had its own settlement history. The state's early colonists tended to identify more closely with their county than Delaware as a whole. Large parts of southern and western Delaware were thought to have been{{clarify|reason=Unintentionally hilarious. Cartographic uncertainty or political ascertainment?|date=July 2015}} in [[Maryland]] until 1767. The state has existed in the wide economic and political circle of the nearby [[Pennsylvania|Pennsylvanian]]n city of [[Philadelphia]].{{clarify|date=January 2023}}
 
==Native Americans==
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But [[Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore]], Proprietor of [[Maryland]], claimed a competing grant to lands on the western shore of [[Delaware Bay]], including all of the present state of Delaware. In deference to the royal will of Charles II to please his brother, James, Duke of York, Calvert did not press his claim. James, the Duke of York, believed he had won the area in war and was justified in ownership. The area was administered from [[New York City|New York]] as a part of James' New York colony.
 
[[William Penn]] was granted "Pennsylvania", in which the grant specifically excluded New Castle or any of the lands within {{convert|12|mi}} of it. Nevertheless, Penn wanted an outlet to the sea from his new province. He persuaded James to lease him the western shore of Delaware Bay. So, in 1682, Penn arrived in New Castle with two documents: a charter for the [[Province of Pennsylvania]] and a lease for what became known as "the Lower Counties on the Delaware".
 
Penn had inherited James' claims and thus began nearly 100 years of litigation between Penn and Baltimore, and their heirs, in the High [[Court of Chancery]] in London. The settlement of the legal battles was started by the heirs' agreeing to the survey performed by [[Charles Mason]] and [[Jeremiah Dixon]] between 1763 and 1767. Their work resulted in the famous [[Mason–Dixon line]]. The final adjudication of the settlement was not completed until the eve of the [[American Revolution]]. The settlement was a major reason for the close political alliance between the property owners of the Lower Counties and the Royalist Proprietary government.
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==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 countiesLower Counties became "The Delaware State", and in 1776 that entity adopted its first constitution, declaring itself to be the "Delaware State". Its first governors went by the title of "President".
 
The [[Battle of Cooch's Bridge]] was the only major military engagement of the Revolution that took place on Delaware soil. The engagement began August 30, 1777, about {{convert|2|mi|0}} south of [[Cooch's Bridge]] (located in present-day [[Newark, Delaware|Newark]]). The Americans harried the lead forces of the [[British Army]]. However, the roughly 700 colonials were greatly outmanned and outgunned. [[George Washington|Washington's]] troops were slowly driven back.
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==Delaware in the Civil War==
[[Slavery in the United States|Slavery]] had been a divisive issue in Delaware for decades before the [[American Civil War]] began. Opposition to slavery in Delaware, imported from [[Quakers|Quaker]]-dominated Pennsylvania, led many slaveowners to free their slaves; half of the state's black population was free by 1810, and more than 90% were free by 1860.<ref name="udel.edu">{{cite web|url=http://www.udel.edu/BlackHistory/antebellum.html|title=The Growth of Delaware's Antebellum Free African American Community|website=www.udel.edu|access-date=17 June 17, 2017}}</ref> This trend also led pro-slavery legislators to restrict free black organizations, and the constabulary in Wilmington was accused of harsh enforcement of [[Fugitive slaves in the United States|runaway slave]] laws, while many Delawareans kidnapped free blacks among the large communities throughout the state and sold them to plantations further south.<ref name="udel.edu"/>
 
During the Civil War, Delaware was a [[Slave states and free states|slave state]] that remained in the [[Union (American Civil War)|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 its governor at the time.{{Citation needed|date=March 2012}} 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 States of America|Confederate]] side in the Maryland and Virginia Regiments. Delaware was the one slave state from which the Confederate States of America could not recruit a full regiment.<ref>{{Citationcite book needed|datetitle=March 2012The Civil War State by State |last= Hearn |first= Chester G. |publisher= [[BlueRed Press]] |location= Totnes, Devon |year= 2011 |page=69 |isbn=978-1-908247-04-9}}</ref>
 
[[File:Fort delaware.jpeg|thumb|300px|''Fort Delaware'', painted circa 1870 by [[Seth Eastman]].]] By 1862, [[Fort Delaware]], a harbor defense facility that was located on Pea Patch Island in the Delaware River and had been designed by chief engineer Joseph Gilbert Totten circa 1819, was pressed into service as a prison for Confederate prisoners of war, political prisoners, federal convicts, and privateer officers.<ref>Dobbs, Kelli W. and Rebecca J. Siders. Fort Delaware Architectural Research Project. Newark, Delaware: University of Delaware, Center for Historic Architecture and Design, 1999.</ref><ref name="American state papers 1834">{{cite book |title=American state papers: documents, legislative and executive, of the Congress of the United States, From the First Session to the Second Session of the Eighteenth Congress, Inclusive. Commencing December 27, 1819, and ending February 28, 1825 |location=Washington, DC |publisher=Gales and Seaton |year=1834 |id={{OCLC|767962786|54935102|3386664}} |isbn=9780893085148 |volume= Class V. Military Affairs Volume II |url=https://archive.org/stream/americanstatepap_f02unit#page/n7/mode/2up/search/Fort+Delaware }}{{Page needed|date=May 2018}}</ref><ref name="Hamilton Wilson 1981">{{cite book |last=Hamilton |first=A. J. |editor-last=Wilson |editor-first=W. Emerson |title=A Fort Delaware journal : the diary of a Yankee private, A.J. Hamilton, 1862-65 |publisher=Fort Delaware Society |location=Wilmington, DE, US |year=1981 |oclc=8805488 }}</ref> The first [[Prisoner of war|prisoners of war]] (POWs) were confined in the fort's interior in casemates, empty powder magazines, or one of two small rooms in the sally port. The first general from the Confederate States of America to be housed at the fort was [[J. Johnston Pettigrew|Brig. Gen. J. Johnston Pettigrew]].
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As realization dawned that more housing would be needed for the increasing number of POWs captured by Union troops, officials at the fort embarked on a construction program in 1862, building barracks for enlisted soldiers which came to be known as the "bull pen."<ref>Berkeley, Henry R. ''Four years in the Confederate Artillery: The Diary of Private Henry Robinson Berkeley''. Richmond, Virginia: Virginia Historical Society, 1991., p. 128.</ref> A 600-bed hospital was also built, as were barracks for the Union soldiers who would be brought in to guard the increasing POW ranks.
 
The first Confederate prisoner to die at Fort Delaware was Captain L. P. Halloway of the [[27th Virginia Infantry]]. Captured at [[Winchester, Virginia, in the American Civil War|Winchester, Virginia]] on March 23, 1862, he died at the fort on April 9.<ref>"Local Intelligence, Matters at Fort Delaware." Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: ''Philadelphia Inquirer'', July 21, 1862, p. 8.</ref> By the end of the war, the fort had held almost 33,000 prisoners, roughly 2,500 of whom died as the conditions continued to deteriorate. Half of the deaths were reportedly due to an outbreak of [[Smallpox|variola]] (smallpox) in 1863. Other causes of death included: diarrhea (315), inflammation of the lungs (243), [[typhoid fever]] and/or [[malaria]] (215), [[scurvy]] (70), [[pneumonia]] (61), [[erysipelas]] (47), gunshot wounds (7), and drowning (5).<ref>Jamison, Jocelyn P., ''They Died at Fort Delaware 1861-1865: Confederate, Union and Civilian''. Delaware City, Delaware: Fort Delaware Society, 1997.</ref><ref>Mowday, Bruce and Dale Fetzer. ''Unlikely Allies: Fort Delaware's Prison Community in the Civil War''. Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books, 2000.</ref> In addition, 109 Union soldiers and 40 civilians also died at the fort during the war.<ref>Jamison, Jocelyn P., 1997., pp. 85–90.</ref>
 
Among the political prisoners held at Fort Delaware was the Rev. Issac W. K. Handy, who had commented in December 1863 that the Civil War had tarnished one of the nation's most cherished symbols, the American flag. Arrested for comments made during a dinner, he was jailed without trial and, because [[Habeas Corpus Suspension Act (1863)|habeas corpus]] had been suspended by this time during the war, he was then held at the fort for 15 months.<ref>"[http://www1.udel.edu/researchmagazine/issue/vol2_no2_security/escape_from_fort_delaware.html Prisoner with UD Ties]." Newark, Delaware: University of Delaware, Office of Communications & Marketing, accessed May 10, 2018.</ref>
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==1865–1899==
After the Civil War, Democratic governments continued to dominate the South and imposed explicitly [[white supremacist]] regimes in the former slave states. The Delaware legislature declared blacks asto be second-class citizens in 1866 and restricted their voting rights despite the Fifteenth Amendment, ensuring continued Democratic success in the state throughout most of the nineteenth century. Fearful that the [[1875 Civil Rights Act]] passed by Congress might establish social equality, Delaware legislators passed [[Jim Crow laws]] that mandated [[racial segregation]] in public facilities and effectively codified the state's tradition of white supremacy. The state's educational system was segregated by operation of law.{{citation needed|date=September 2015}} Delaware's segregation was written into the state constitution, which, while providing at Article X, Section 2,{{citation needed|date=September 2015}} that "no distinction shall be made on account of race or color", nonetheless required that "separate schools for white and colored children shall be maintained."{{citation needed|date=September 2015}}
 
==1900–present==
In 1952, ''[[Gebhart v. Belton]]'' was decided by the [[Delaware Court of Chancery]] and affirmed by the [[Delaware Supreme Court]] in the same year. ''Gebhart'' was one of the five cases combined into ''[[Brown v. Board of Education]]'',{{citation needed|date=September 2015}} the 1954 decision of the [[Supreme Court of the United States|United States Supreme Court]] which found [[racial segregation]] in United States [[State school|public schools]] to be unconstitutional.
 
The end result of the ''Gebhart'' and ''Brown'' litigation was that Delaware became fully integrated, albeit with time and much opposition from white residentseffort. The [[white supremacist]] [[Bryant Bowles]] raised $6,000 and founded the [[National Association for the Advancement of White People (1953-1955)|National Association for the Advancement of White People]] (NAAWP) to oppose the rulings. Bowles briefly attracted nationwide attention for leading a pro-[[racial segregation|segregation]] [[boycott]] of [[Milford High School (Delaware)|Milford High School]]. A mass meeting in [[Milford, Delaware|Milford]] in October 1954 attracted a crowd of 3,000 people.<ref name=":2">{{cite newsmagazine|date=11 October 11, 1954|title=Education: Racial Flare-Up|workmagazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]]|url=http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,936456,00.html}}</ref><ref name=":3">{{Cite book|last=Webb|first=Clive|title=Rabble Rousers: the American Far Right in the Civil Rights Era|publisher=University of Georgia Press|year=2010|location=Athens}}</ref> Bowles encouraged a boycott to protest the integration of schools after eleven black students were enrolled in the previously racially segregated school.<ref name=":4">{{Cite news|date=October 16, 1954|title=White Supremacy Leader Arrested|work=Indianapolis Recorder|url=https://newspapers.library.in.gov/?a=d&d=INR19541016-01.1.1&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-------}}</ref><ref name=":2"/> Only 456 out of 1562 students attended the next day, and the movement gained traction in the nearby town of [[Lincoln, Delaware|Lincoln]], where 116 of the 146 pupils in the local elementary school boycotted in solidarity.<ref name=":2"/> Mass protests continued in Milford; the school board eventually ceded to the protestors, expelling the black students.<ref name=":2"/><ref name=":4"/> Several weeks later, Bowles was arrested for "conspiring to violate the state education law by leading a boycott at Milford’s integrated high school". The [[AfricanAttorney AmericansGeneral of Delaware|AfricanAttorney AmericanGeneral]] studentslater took action to revoke the NAAWP's [[corporate charter]] in September 1955.<ref Thename=":4"/><ref name=":3"/> However, the ensuing unrest, which included [[cross burning]]s, rallies, and pro-segregation demonstrations, contributed to [[Desegregation in the United States|desegregation]] in some partsmost of Southern Delaware being delayed for another ten years. School segregation in the state would not end until 1967.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.capegazette.com/node/65880 | title=In Delaware, school segregation persisted until 1967 }}</ref>
 
Some{{who|date=September 2020}} argue that while the state of race relations was dramatically improving post-''Brown'', any progress was destroyed in the wake of the [[riot]]ing that broke out in Wilmington in April 1968 in the wake of the assassination of [[Martin Luther King Jr.|Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.]] in [[Memphis, Tennessee|Memphis]]{{citation needed|date=September 2020}}. Delaware's response to the Wilmington riots was heavy-handed in the opinion of some{{who|date=September 2020}}, involving the virtual occupation{{opinion|date=September 2020}} of the city for over one year by the [[Delaware National Guard]].
 
==See also==
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==Sources==
*{{cite book |title= Delaware during the Civil War |last= Hancock |first= Harold Bell. |publisher= [[Historical Society of Delaware]] |location= Wilmington, Delaware |year= 1961 |isbn=0-924117-24-9}}
*{{cite book |title= The Civil War State by State |last= Hearn |first= Chester G. |publisher= [[BlueRed Press]] |location= Totnes, Devon |year= 2011 |isbn=978-1-908247-04-9}}
*{{cite book |title= Democracy in Delaware |last= Hoffecker |first= Carol E. |publisher= Cedar Tree Books |location= Wilmington, Delaware |year= 2004 |isbn= 1-892142-23-6}}
*{{cite book |title= A History of Delaware Through its Governors |last= Martin |first= Roger A. |publisher= McClafferty Press |location= Wilmington, Delaware |year= 1984 }}
*{{cite book |title = Memoirs of the Senate |last = Martin |first = Roger A. |publisher = Roger A. Martin |location = Newark, DE |year = 1995 }}
*{{cite book |title = The Philadelawareans |last = Munroe |first = John A. |publisher = University of Delaware Press |location = Newark, Delaware |year = 2004 |isbn= 0-87413-872-8}}
*{{cite book |title= History of Delaware |last= Munroe |first= John A. |publisher= University of Delaware Press |location= Newark, Delaware |year= 1993 |isbn= 0-87413-493-5}} [https://archive.org/details/historyofdelawar0000munr oenlineonline free to borrow]
*{{cite book |title = History of Delaware 1609-1888. 2 vols. |last = Scharf |first = John Thomas |publisher = L. J. Richards & Co. |location = Philadelphia |year = 1888 }} [https://archive.org/details/historyofdelawar0000munr oenlineonline free to borrow]
*{{cite book |title= Forgotten Heroes of Delaware |last= Wilson |first= Emerson. |publisher= Deltos Publishing Company |location= Cambridge, Massachusetts |year= 1969 }}
 
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*[[Amandus Johnson|Johnson, Amandus]] ''The Swedes in America 1638–1900: Vol. I, The Swedes on the Delaware 1638–1664''. (1914)
*[[Amandus Johnson|Johnson, Amandus]] ''The Swedish Settlements on the Delaware 1638–1664, Volume II'' (1927)
 
* Miller, Richard F. ed. ''States at War, Volume 4: A Reference Guide for Delaware, Maryland, and New Jersey in the Civil War'' (2015) [https://www.amazon.com/States-War-Reference-Delaware-Maryland/dp/1611686210/ excerpt] 890pp.
 
*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)
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[[Category:History of Delaware| ]]
[[Category:History of the United States by state or territory|Delaware]]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Delaware"