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Delaware

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Delaware ( ) is a U.S. state located on the Atlantic Coast in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States.While the designates Delaware as one of the South Atlantic States, many consider it part of the Mid-Atlantic States or the Northeastern United States. Examples include other U.S. government agencies (such as the , , , , and ), and public service organizations (such as and ). categorization scheme includes it in both the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions. The state takes its name from Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, a British nobleman and Virginia's first colonial governor, after whom (what is now called) Cape Henlopen was originally named.

Delaware is located in the eastern section of the Delmarva Peninsula, between Delaware Bay and Chesapeake Bay, and is the second smallest state in area (after Rhode Island). 2007 estimates place the population of Delaware ranking 45th in the nation, but 6th in population density, with more than 60% of the population in New Castle County.http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/voting/011400.html Delaware is divided into three counties: New Castle, Kent, and Sussex. While the southern two counties have historically been predominantly agricultural, the northernmost county has helped lead the state to rank 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. The history of the state's economic and industrial development is closely tied to the impact of the Du Pont family, founder of E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, one of the world’s largest chemical companies.

Before its coastline was first explored by Europeans in the 16th century, Delaware was inhabited by several groups of Native Americans, including the Lenape toward the north and Nanticoke toward the south. It was initially colonized by Dutch traders at Zwaanendael, located near the present town of Lewes, in 1631. Delaware was one of the thirteen original states participating in the American Revolution and on December 7, 1787, became the first to ratify the Constitution of the United States.

Geography

thumb|300px|left|Map of Delawarethumb|285px|The Twelve-Mile Circlethumb|285px|Diagram of the Twelve-Mile Circle, the Mason-Dixon Line and "[[The Wedge (border)|The Wedge." All blue and white areas are inside Delaware.]]
Delaware is long and ranges from 9 to across, totaling and 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 far, or eastern, side of the Delaware River estuary, 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 south down the Mid-Atlantic Coast.

The definition of the northern boundary of the state is highly unusual. Most of the boundary between Delaware and Pennsylvania is defined by an arc extending twelve miles (19 km) from the cupola of the courthouse in New Castle. It is referred to as the Twelve-Mile Circle. This is the only true-arc political 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 twelve-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 Estuary. 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 subdivided into three counties: from north to south, New Castle, Kent County and Sussex.
Main articles: Twelve-Mile Circle, The Wedge, Mason-Dixon line, Transpeninsular Line

Topography

Delaware is on a level plain, with the lowest mean elevation of any state in the nation. Its highest elevation, located at Ebright Azimuth, near Concord High School, Wilmington, does not rise fully above sea level. The northern part is associated with the Appalachian Piedmont and is full of hills with rolling surfaces. South of Newark and Wilmington, the state follows the Atlantic Coastal Plain with flat, sandy, and, in some parts, swampy ground. A ridge about 75 to in elevation extends along the western boundary of the state and is the drainage divide between the two major water bodies of the Delaware River and several streams flowing into Chesapeake Bay in the west.

Climate

Since almost all of Delaware is a part of the Atlantic Coastal Plain, the climate is moderated by the effects of the ocean. The state is somewhat of a transitional zone between a humid subtropical climate and a continental climate. Despite its small size (roughly 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. The transitional climate of Delaware supports a wide variety of vegetation. At Trap Pond State Park in Sussex County, bald cypress grow—this is thought to be one of the northernmost stands of such trees. The vegetation in New Castle County, on the other hand, is more typical of that of the northeastern United States. All parts of Delaware have relatively hot, humid summers. While Sussex and Kent Counties are considered to fall in the humid subtropical climate zone, there is some debate about whether northern New Castle County falls in the humid subtropical climate zone or warm continental climate.

History

Native Americans

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 left the region and moved over the Alleghany Mountains by the mid-18th century.

Colonial Delaware

The Dutch were the first Europeans to settle in present-day Delaware 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. Thirteen years later, the Dutch, reinvigorated by the leadership of Peter Stuyvesant, established a new fort in 1651 at present-day New Castle, and in 1655 they took over the New Sweden colony, incorporating it into the Dutch New Netherland.

Only nine years later, in 1664, the Dutch were themselves forcibly removed by a British expedition 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" 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. During much of the colonial period, New York and New Jersey shared a governor, as did Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

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. Before the Revolution, it had begun to shift to mixed agriculture.

American Revolution

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. Nevertheless, there was strong objection to the seemingly arbitrary measures of Parliament, and leaders understood that the territory's existence as a separate entity depended upon its keeping step with its powerful neighbors, especially Pennsylvania.

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. Once the Declaration was adopted, however, Read signed the document.

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. It is believed to be the first time that the Stars and Stripes was flown in battle.

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. Only the repeated military actions of State President Caesar Rodney were able to harass the British.

Following the American Revolution, statesmen from Delaware were among the leading proponents of a strong central United States with equal representation for each state. Once the Connecticut Compromise was reached—creating a U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives—the leaders in Delaware were able to easily secure ratification of the U.S. Constitution on December 7, 1787, making Delaware the first state to do so.

Slavery and race

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. 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.

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.

The first 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.
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 American 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 did not free its slaves until forced to by the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution in December 1865.

Demographics

thumb|left|200px|Delaware Population Density Map

The five largest ancestries in Delaware are: African American (19.2%), Irish (16.6%), German (14.3%), English (12.1%), Italian (9.3%). Delaware has the highest proportion of African-American residents of any state north of Maryland, and had the largest percentage of free blacks (17% of the state's total population) prior to the Civil War.

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, and Wyoming do not have a single city with a population over 100,000 as of the 2007 census. The center of population of Delaware is located in New Castle County, in the town of Townsend.

Languages

As of 2000, 90.5% of Delaware residents age 5 and older speak only English at home; 4.7% speak Spanish. French is the third most spoken language at 0.7%, followed by Chinese at 0.5% and German at 0.5%.

Legislation has been proposed by both the House and the Senate in Delaware to designate English as the official language.

Religion

The religious affiliations of the people of Delaware are:
  • No Religion – 17%
  • Other – 5%
  • Refused - 9%

(source: )

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.

Delaware's population includes approximately 20,000 Jewish Americans, who are served by the Jewish Community Center in Brandywine (near Wilmington) and by a number of educational, social and cultural agencies supported by the Jewish Federation of Delaware. Synagogues include Congregation Beth Emeth (Reform) in Wilmington, Congregation Beth El (Reconstructionist) in Newark, Congregation Beth Shalom (Conservative) in Wilmington, Congregation Beth Sholom (Conservative) in Dover, and Adas Kodesh Shel Emeth (Traditional) in Wilmington. Seaside Jewish Community in Rehoboth Beach (unaffiliated) There is also a Lubavitcher community center and synagogue in Brandywine Hundred.

Economy

250 px|thumb|right|"Picking Peaches in Delaware" from an 1878 issue of Harper's Weekly
The gross state product of Delaware in 2003 was $49 billion. 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.

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 economy of the United States.

The state's largest employers are:
  • government (State of Delaware, New Castle County)
 
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