When the Duke of York took New Amster dam from the Dutch in 1664 the Delaware set tlements went with it, and New Amstel was re named New Castle. When the Dutch retook New York in 1673 there was a renewed Dutch rule on the Delaware, which, however, lasted but one year, Delaware and New York being restored to England by the Treaty of Westmin ster, 1674. On 24 Aug. 1682,, by a supplemental deed from the Duke of York, William Penn ac quired the whole country comprising the present State of Delaware. There were at that time about 3,500 people "in the province of Pennsyl vania, and territories and on the eastern bank of the Delaware from Trenton to Salem"; 7,000 in 1684 in the province alone. The people from the earliest settlements were successively governed by Swedish, Dutch and English rulers, with few or no legislative powers until Penn's time, when a pretense of granting such was made by him. It is, indeed, a strange anomaly that a good man who from his Newgate cell penned works on liberty of conscience wor thy to rank with Milton's (Areopagitica,) or other like classics of human liberty, could have originated so autocratic a system of govern ment as his Upland Code of 1682, which was, in fact, an utter denial of all self-government I But, despite this, the people gradually won the right of self-government, till, upon their separa tion in 1776 from Pennsylvania, "the three coun ties upon the Delaware,' as they had been styled, assumed the full power of autonomy under the name of the "State of Delaware." The century long title dispute with the Baltimores was set tled in 1768. The lower river settlements were first governed as part of Pennsylvania, sending six representatives each to its legislature; but there was no community of interests or feel ings between the two sections; quarrels were frequent and in 1691 the three counties seceded and for two years there was a dual government. In 1703 they were granted a separate legislature, which met at New Castle and the two sections continued more peaceably together, having one council and governor, till the Revolution. In the Continental Congress the colony was sepa rately represented as the "Three Lower Coun ties on the Delaware." These counties were originally known as New Castle, Jones and Whorekill or Deal, but Penn changed them — Deal to Sussex and Jones to Kent. On 21 Sep tember a convention at New Castle adopted a State constitution, in which the three counties were called "The Delaware State' John Mc Kinley was elected its first president or gover nor in 1777. It was the first (7 December) to ratify the national Constitution. In 1792 it adopted a new constitution; in 1831 a third and in 1897 the present one.
Delaware was a slave-holding State during the Civil War, and a large number of its people, especially in Kent and Sussex counties, warmly sympathized with the South, but even there a deep reverence for the Constitution and a devo tion to the Union was felt. But the large pre ponderance of population and wealth in New Castle, together with the courageous loyalty of its war governor, William Cannon, kept the State from secession. Still, had the buffer
State of Maryland seceded, it is possible Dela ware would also have done so. On 2 Jan. 1861, the house unanimously, and the senate by a majority, voted "unqualified disapproval' of a solicitation to secede, made in person by Henry Dickinson, a commissioner from Mississippi. The call for Union troops was answered so quickly and fully that Lincoln said in his mes sage of 3 Dec. 1861, "Noble little Delaware led off right from the first.' The records of the War Department show that out of its entire male population of 59,689— of which nearly one-sixth were blacks — it furnished 13,651 troops —a proportion probably not equaled by any other State. If to this be added the hun dreds who entered the Southern army, it would amount to about one-fourth of all the males l In this it kept good its unequaled record of 1776, when out of a population of 37,219 it gave 4,728 to the cause of the Revolution, besides several hundred militia. During the Recon struction period, however, the legislative ma jority sympathized with the South, and by large majorities in both branches voted against the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments. Delaware and Kentucky never ratified the Thirteenth Amendment. The leading element in State politics since 1850 has been the "Peace Democrats,' devoted to the Union but opposed to coercion of the States, as exemplified in the Bayard family (see BAYARD, JAMES A. 2d, and THOMAS F.). The Democratic majority was always small, except in 1878 when the Republi can party was temporarily ruined by joining the Greenback-Labor party.
The American Flag was first unfurled on land in the fight at Cooch's Bridge, Del. 3 Sept. 1777; a handsome monument marks the spot. George Read, "The Signer,' as he is styled in Delaware annals, shares with one other the unique distinction of having signed all the three great charters of the Nation's freedom, viz., the first petition of the Congress of 1774 to the king, the Declaration of Inde pendence and the Constitution of the United States. The nickname, "The Blue Hen's Chickens,' for the people of Delaware, was first given to the Revolutionary soldiers of Captain Caldwell, famous for their dash and either because of the prize fighting cocks (chickens of a certain "blue hen") he carried with him, or from their blue uniforms. Tradi tion says their flag also bore the inscription.
The early colonizers or governors of New Castle, Kent and Sussex counties, prior to Delaware statehood, were as follows; . Under William Penn, proprietor, 1681-1718, twenty-six representatives of Penn ruled up to 1704 when the three counties, New Castle, Kent and Sussex seceded and set up their own local government, merely acknowledging the au thority of the Provincial governor of Pennsyl vania. Thereafter, 13 such Provincial gover nors represented William Penn till his death in 1718, and his three sons as Proprietors up to 1776, when the three counties separated from Pennsylvania and became the autonomous State of Delaware.