Delaware

The smallest colony, fought over by three European powers, and now the legal home of most large American companies. New Sweden was founded at Fort Christina in 1638, the only Swedish colony in North America and the source of the log cabin in American building; the Dutch took it in 1655 and the English took the Dutch in 1664. Delaware was then governed as the three lower counties of Pennsylvania under the same proprietor, gaining its own assembly in 1704 but sharing Penn's governor until the revolution, which is why it is separate from Pennsylvania at all. It was the first state to ratify the Constitution, on 7 December 1787, and small-state insistence on equal Senate representation was central to that document's compromise. It was a slave state that did not secede, and it rejected the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, only ratifying it symbolically in 1901. Du Pont, founded on the Brandywine in 1802 as a gunpowder mill, became one of the world's largest chemical companies and dominated the state. A corporation law written in 1899 and a specialised Court of Chancery have made Delaware the state of incorporation for over two-thirds of the Fortune 500. It has no sales tax. Dover is the capital and Wilmington the largest city. The state has three counties, fewer than any other. It is named for Lord De La Warr, an early Virginia governor. Its northern boundary is a twelve-mile arc centred on the New Castle courthouse, the only circular state border in the country. Joe Biden represented it in the Senate for thirty-six years.

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