Delaware

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Delaware ratified the United States Constitution on the 7th of December 1787, becoming the first state in the union and earning the nickname it has carried ever since: "The First State." It is a place that punches well above its size. Covering just 1,982 square miles, it is the second-smallest state in the nation, and yet more than half of all publicly traded American companies are incorporated within its borders. How does a narrow strip of land on the Mid-Atlantic coast become the legal home of corporate America? And how did a state that once enslaved people, rejected three constitutional amendments, and imposed strict segregation become a reliably Democratic political stronghold? The answers run through centuries of colonial rivalry, the chemistry of gunpowder, a family named du Pont, and a single overnight horseback ride that changed the course of a revolution.

• 2. A Name From Across the Ocean

  ›

  Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, born in 1577, never set foot in the territory that would carry his name forever. He served as the first colonial-era governor of Virginia, and European explorers named the bay adjacent to his jurisdiction after him. That bay gave its name to the river, which gave its name to the land, which gave its name to the people who already lived there. The Lenape, whom Europeans called the Delaware people, acquired a European label drawn from an Anglo-French place name rooted in the Old French lieu-dit La Guerre, itself possibly descended from the Latin ager or the Late Latin varectum, meaning fallow ground. Scholars also connect the name to the Old Norse verr through a patronymic line. The result is that a Native people, a river, a bay, and an American state all carry the title of a seventeenth-century English baron who governed a different colony entirely.

• 3. Competing Colonial Claims

  ›

  Peter Minuit arrived at the head of a group of Swedes, Finns, and Dutch in 1638, establishing New Sweden at Fort Christina, which now sits inside the modern city of Wilmington. That colony lasted 17 years before Peter Stuyvesant, reinvigorated and determined, led the Dutch to establish a fort at present-day New Castle in 1651 and conquer New Sweden in 1655. Nine years later, in 1664, Sir Robert Carr led a fleet of English ships under the direction of James, the Duke of York, and overwhelmed the Dutch in turn. The Duke then passed his ownership to William Penn in 1682, and Penn, who desperately wanted sea access for his Pennsylvania province, leased what became known as the "Lower Counties on the Delaware." Penn combined both territories under one General Assembly in 1682, but by 1704 the representatives of Pennsylvania had grown so numerous that they no longer wanted to govern alongside the Lower Counties. The two assemblies split: one met in Philadelphia, the other in New Castle. The same governor, however, continued to preside over both until American independence ended the arrangement.

• 4. Revolution and the Overnight Ride

  ›

  Caesar Rodney made one of the most consequential journeys in American political history on a single night in 1776. The Kent County native rode through darkness to reach the Continental Congress in time to cast Delaware's vote for independence, breaking a deadlock that the delegation's majority voice, George Read, had refused to resolve. Read could not bring himself to vote for separation from Britain. Without Rodney's ride, Delaware's vote might have been withheld. Thomas McKean, a New Castle lawyer, had already denounced the Stamp Act in forceful terms, and fellow Delawarean John Dickinson had earned the title "Penman of the Revolution." Patriot leaders McKean and Rodney had pushed the Colonial Assembly to declare separation from British and Pennsylvania rule on the 15th of June 1776, weeks before the formal Declaration. When British General Sir William Howe marched through Delaware in August 1777 on his way to the Battle of Brandywine and the capture of Philadelphia, State President John McKinly was taken prisoner in Wilmington. The only real engagement on Delaware soil was the Battle of Cooch's Bridge, fought on the 3rd of September 1777, in New Castle County.

• 5. Slavery's Long Unraveling

  ›

  John Dickinson freed his 37 enslaved people in 1777, making him at that moment Delaware's largest slaveholder. His act was part of a broader wave of individual manumissions encouraged by local Methodists and Quakers who pressed slaveholders to free people after the Revolution. By 1810, three-quarters of all Black people in Delaware were free. By the 1860 census, 91.7% of the Black population were free; only 1,798 remained enslaved, compared to 19,829 listed as free. The state voted against secession on the 3rd of January 1861 and remained in the Union, notable as the only slave state from which no Confederate regiments were assembled. Yet the legislature rejected the 13th Amendment on the 8th of February 1865, the 14th Amendment on the 8th of February 1867, and the 15th Amendment on the 18th of March 1869. Delaware did not officially ratify all three amendments until the 12th of February 1901, decades after they had already become law. Peter Spencer, a freed slave, chartered an independent Black denomination in 1813 called the Union Church of Africans, built a church in Wilmington, and in 1814 called the first annual Big August Quarterly, a religious and cultural gathering whose descendants still hold it today.

• 6. DuPont and the Industrial North

  ›

  Investment in manufacturing in Wilmington grew from $5.5 million in 1860 to $44 million in 1900, and the chemical company DuPont stood at the center of that transformation. By the First World War, DuPont produced an estimated 40% of all gunpowder used by the Allied forces. After the war the company began making nylon, invested in General Motors, and turned resources toward expanding public schools and colleges, including the University of Delaware, during the 1910s and 1920s. That investment extended to schools for Black children and for women. In the late 2010s, the merger of E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Dow Chemical into DowDuPont, completed on the 1st of September 2017, reshaped a company whose footprint had already been shrinking: in late 2015, DuPont announced layoffs of 1,700 Delaware employees, nearly a third of its local workforce, set for early 2016. Pierre S. du Pont, who served as president of the state board of education in the early 1920s, found the condition of Black schools so appalling that he donated four million dollars to build 86 new school buildings.

• 7. The Corporate State

  ›

  More than half of all publicly traded American companies are incorporated in Delaware, along with 63% of the Fortune 500. Over 90% of all U.S.-based companies that went public in 2021 chose Delaware. Franchise taxes on Delaware corporations supply about a fifth of the state's total revenue, and there are more than a million registered corporations on file. The draw is the Delaware Court of Chancery, one of the few such courts still operating in the nation, which handles the vast majority of corporate disputes, particularly mergers and acquisitions. The court and the Delaware Supreme Court have built a global reputation for clear opinions that generally grant wide discretion to corporate boards. Delaware ranked 4th for new businesses formed in 2025, with 327,103 filings. The state imposes no sales tax on consumers and no state-level tax on real or personal property, and its six income tax brackets run from 2.2% to 5.95%. In June 2018, Delaware became the first state to legalize sports betting after the Supreme Court overturned the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992.

• 8. A State of Borders and Belonging

  ›

  Delaware is 96 miles long and ranges from 9 to 35 miles wide, yet its northern boundary is drawn by an arc extending 12 miles from the cupola of the courthouse in New Castle, a boundary known as the Twelve-Mile Circle. A wedge of land between the northwest part of that arc and the Maryland border was claimed by both Delaware and Pennsylvania until 1921, when Delaware's claim was confirmed. The state holds the lowest mean elevation of any state in the nation; its highest point, Ebright Azimuth near Concord High School, sits at less than 450 feet above sea level. Trap Pond State Park and surrounding areas in Sussex County contain the northernmost stands of bald cypress trees in North America. Delaware's all-time record high of 110 degrees Fahrenheit was recorded at Millsboro on the 21st of July 1930; the all-time record low of -17 degrees Fahrenheit was also recorded at Millsboro, on the 17th of January 1893. The U.S. Census Bureau classifies the state as part of the South Atlantic region, while other federal agencies, news media, and many residents describe it as Mid-Atlantic or Northeastern. By 1990, only 50% of Delaware's population consisted of people born in the state, a testament to how much it draws from the larger corridor of cities that surround it.