Treason, murder in the first degree, arson of a dwelling, rape, and burglary at night, with intent to commit high crimes, are punishable with death. The whipping-post and pillory have been in use for petty offenders. Adultery by a wife or impotence on either side is a cause for divorce; and divorce may be granted for cruelty, abandonment, etc. Until 1828 the Presidential Electors of Delaware were chosen by the Legislature; since then they have been elected by the popular vote. In 1812, 1816, and 1820 Delaware had two Representatives in Congress, and therefore cast four electoral votes; but at all other times, having but one such Representative, it has cast only three electoral votes.
Militia. There is a total organized militia of 368 men. There are 40,029 men of military age.
Finance. In December, 1900, the total assets of the State amounted to $1,128,445.76, of which $1,030,542 represented investments. The State debt for the same date was $769,750, the greater part of which was incurred in the loans of 1887 and 1897. The disbursements for that year amounted to $310,868.86, and the receipts, $381,813.95. The largest item of the receipts ($155,863.73) was returned from licenses.
History. The aboriginal inhabitants of the region belonged to the Lenni Lenape family, but Iroquois hunting parties frequently traversed the country. The name Delaware was first applied to the bay which Lord de la Warr entered in 1611. Mey, a Dutch explorer, built Fort Nassau on Timber Creek in 1623, and in 1631 a Dutch company, headed by De Vries, established a colony on Lewes Creek, near Cape Henlopen, which the Indians destroyed. In 1638 a colony of Swedes erected a fort on Christiana Creek, named the country New Sweden, and subsequently established a military post on the island of Tinnicum, below Philadelphia. The Dutch considered this an invasion of their territory and set up Fort Casimir, near the site of the present New Castle. A settlement on the Delaware, made in 1641 near the present site of Salem, N. J., by a colony from New Haven, existed only for two years. After 1642 the Swedes and the Dutch came into open conflict. The Swedes took Fort Casimir in 1654, but were driven out in the following year by the Dutch, who seized the whole country. When New Netherlands came into the possession of the English the settlements on the Delaware were claimed both by the Duke of York and by Lord Baltimore. In 1683 William Penn received the territory in fee from the Duke of York and effected a compromise with Lord Baltimore, and for twenty years Delaware was governed as a part of Pennsylvania under the name of the ‘Territories or Three Lower Counties on the Delaware,’ each county sending six Representatives to the General Assembly. In 1703 Delaware established a separate legislature, but continued to acknowledge the authority of the Governor of Pennsylvania till the Revolution. In the War of Independence, the ‘Blue Hen's Chickens,’ as the Delaware volunteers were called, rendered efficient service. The State was the first to ratify the Federal Constitution, December 7, 1787.
Though a slave-holding State, Delaware remained faithful to the Union in 1861, and contributed nearly 14,000 troops to the Northern armies. In the southern part of the State, however, the Confederate sentiment was strong, and large numbers went to join the Southern forces. The inhabitants accepted the results of the war with ill grace. The Fourteenth Amendment was denounced by the Legislature, and though no forcible attempts were made, as in the South, to hamper the enfranchised negroes in the exercise of their newly acquired civil and political rights, the feeling of race hatred prevailed for a long time after the war.
The economic history of the State since 1865 has been a happy one. The period has witnessed a remarkable growth of the railway system, the development of the fruit industry, and the rise of Wilmington as a ship-building and manufacturing centre. Progress in public education has been, on the whole, unsatisfactory, owing to the lack of a central Department of Instruction. The rapid growth of Wilmington in population since 1873 has created great opposition to the prevailing system of representation in the Legislature as being unfair to the inhabitants of that city. This is owing to the fact that the State Representatives are apportioned equally among the three countries, with the result that Newcastle County, containing the city of Wilmington, with an industrial population one and a half times that of the agricultural counties of Sussex and Kent, has always been in a hopeless minority. From 1788 to 1852 Delaware was a Federal or Whig State in national elections excepting in 1820, when it cast its vote for Monroe. Since 1852 it has been a Democratic State with the exception of the years 1872, 1896, and 1900. In State politics it was consistently Democratic from 1865 to 1900. In 1895 the Republican Party, owing to internal dissensions, was split into two factions. This led to the assembling of a rump Republican Legislature in 1897, and to a prolonged contest for the choice of a United States Senator. Neither faction would yield, and the Democratic Party was too weak to avail itself of the dissensions in the Republican Party. Delaware, therefore, had only one Senator in Congress from 1895 to 1901, and has had none since 1901. The first Slate Constitution was adopted in 1776, the second in 1791, the third in 1831, the fourth in 1897.
DELAWARE. A river of the Eastern United States, which rises on the western slopes of the Catskill Mountains (q.v.) in southeastern New York (Map: New Jersey, C 1). It flows in a southwest course to Deposit, a distance of about 100 miles. Here it turns sharply to the southeast and soon forms the boundary between Pennsylvania and New York, receiving at Hancock the waters of the eastern branch, which also rises in the Catskills. At Port Jervis, N. Y., where it becomes the boundary between Pennsylvania and New Jersey, it turns to the southwest and flows in that course to Delaware Water Gap (q.v.), thence generally southward to Easton, Pa., thence southeast to a point just below Trenton, thence southwest again past Philadelphia and Chester, Pa., where it begins to broaden into an estuary, which gradually widens into Delaware Bay. In its lower course it separates New Jersey from Delaware. Its length is 410 miles and it drains an area of 12,012 square miles, of which one-fourth is in New York, over one-half in Pennsylvania, and about one-fifth in New Jersey. Its mean discharge at Lambertville has been estimated at 18,000 cubic feet per second. It has a consider-
