Delaware in the American Revolution
Delaware played a direct and consequential role in the American Revolution, contributing soldiers, political leadership, and strategic geography to the colonial cause for independence. As tensions between the colonies and Britain escalated in the 1770s, Delaware took an active part in the fight for independence, raising troops, debating separation, and ultimately casting its voice in favor of breaking from the British Crown. The state's position along the Delaware River placed it at the center of several critical military operations, most notably George Washington's legendary crossing of the Delaware on the night of December 25, 1776 — an event that has since become embedded in the national memory of the Revolution's darkest and most decisive hours.[1]
Background: Delaware and the Road to Revolution
Delaware in the mid-eighteenth century occupied a peculiar political position. As a small colony with close economic and cultural ties to both Pennsylvania and the broader Atlantic trading world, Delaware was not instinctively radical. Yet as British policies grew more restrictive and colonial grievances mounted, Delaware's political leadership moved steadily toward confrontation. As tensions between the colonies and Britain escalated, Delaware took an active role in the fight for independence, a transformation that reflected broader shifts in colonial opinion across North America.[2]
Delaware had long maintained its own distinct identity despite sharing a governor with Pennsylvania for much of the colonial period. Its assembly had functioned with considerable autonomy, and that institutional independence gave Delaware's political class both the experience and the confidence to act when the moment came. By the early 1770s, Delaware's leaders were engaged in the same debates over taxation, representation, and colonial rights that animated political life throughout British North America. Committees of correspondence formed, colonial assemblies defied royal governors, and the machinery of revolutionary organization slowly assembled itself in Delaware just as it did elsewhere.
The colony sent delegates to the Continental Congress and participated in the deliberations that would ultimately produce a declaration of independence. Delaware's delegation to the Congress would face among the most dramatic votes of the entire revolutionary period, a moment that crystallized the stakes for the small colony and for the continent as a whole.
Delaware's Political Leadership and the Declaration
The question of independence divided Delaware's delegation to the Continental Congress much as it divided opinion across the colonies. The debates were fierce, the outcome uncertain, and Delaware's vote carried weight precisely because the decision required as broad a consensus as possible to give the new nation legitimacy. Delaware's contribution to those deliberations represented a significant act of political commitment, one that aligned the colony firmly with the revolutionary cause at a moment when the outcome of that cause remained deeply in doubt.
The American Revolution Institute recognized the significance of Delaware's political role in a dedicated exhibition, Delaware in the American Revolution, displayed from October 12, 2002, to May 3, 2003, at Anderson House, Headquarters, Library and Museum of the Society of the Cincinnati in Washington, D.C.[3] That exhibition underscored the degree to which Delaware's political and military contributions have been recognized by historians and curators working in the field of American revolutionary history.
Delaware's willingness to commit to independence carried practical as well as symbolic consequences. Once the decision was made, the state was obligated to raise troops, provide supplies, and participate in the military effort that independence required. That effort would be tested severely in the years that followed.
Military Contributions: The Delaware Regiment
Delaware raised military forces to serve in the Continental Army, and its soldiers earned a reputation for steadiness in difficult engagements. The Delaware Regiment, sometimes referred to as the "Blue Hen's Chickens" in later tradition, served in campaigns across the mid-Atlantic theater and beyond. Delaware's geographic position meant that its territory and its river served as both a defensive barrier and a potential invasion route, giving the state's military contributions an immediate strategic relevance.
The state's soldiers fought alongside forces from other colonies in the engagements that defined the Revolution's military arc. They served at a time when the Continental Army's fortunes fluctuated dramatically, and when the commitment of individual soldiers and units could determine whether the revolutionary enterprise survived at all. Delaware's forces were part of an army that endured severe hardship, supply shortages, and repeated military setbacks before the tide of the war began to turn.
Delaware's position along the river that bore its name also meant that events of continental significance unfolded on or near its borders. No episode better illustrates this than Washington's crossing of the Delaware River in the winter of 1776.
Washington's Crossing of the Delaware
The crossing of the Delaware River on the night of December 25, 1776, stands as the most celebrated military operation connected to the state of Delaware, even though the crossing itself took place between Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The river whose name the state bears became the stage for an event that altered the course of the Revolution.
In 1776, General George Washington and his troops crossed the Delaware River for a surprise attack against Hessian forces at Trenton, New Jersey.[4] The crossing took place on the night of December 25, 1776, amid desperate circumstances for the American cause. Thomas Paine, whose pamphlets had done so much to sustain revolutionary morale, called those days "the times that try men's souls," a phrase that captured the psychological as well as military crisis facing Washington and his forces.[5]
The story of the Delaware crossing has become legend, rooted in the peril of that Christmas night and the surprise of the morning that followed.[6] Washington's forces, battered by months of retreat and defeat, managed to move across the ice-choked river in darkness and storm, catching the Hessian garrison at Trenton unprepared. The resulting American victory at Trenton was a military success, but its psychological and political effects were far larger. It demonstrated that the Continental Army could still act offensively, that Washington's leadership remained viable, and that the Revolution had not collapsed.
The operation required precise coordination, physical endurance, and a willingness to accept enormous risk. The icy conditions of the river made the crossing genuinely dangerous, and the outcome was far from certain as the troops embarked. That the operation succeeded, and that it produced a victory that reinvigorated the revolutionary cause, has given the crossing an enduring place in American historical memory.
Re-enactments and Historical Memory
The crossing of the Delaware has been commemorated annually in a tradition that itself has become a significant cultural institution. What started out thirty-three years before 1986 as a personal gesture by a theatrical producer and six friends to re-enact George Washington's crossing of the Delaware River grew into a large-scale annual event drawing thousands of spectators and participants.[7] The re-enactment tradition reflects the degree to which the crossing has become embedded in the public understanding of the Revolution and of the Delaware River's place in American history.
These annual commemorations have served to keep the memory of the crossing accessible to successive generations, translating an event from the late eighteenth century into a living cultural practice. The tradition also speaks to the broader significance that the Delaware River itself carries in the national imagination — a body of water that gave its name to a state and that served as the setting for a moment of extreme national peril and surprising deliverance.
Beyond the famous crossing, the Delaware River itself served as an important military and naval corridor during the Revolution. Control of the river and access to Philadelphia, then the largest city in the colonies and the seat of the Continental Congress, made the Delaware a strategic prize throughout the conflict. British forces understood that dominating the river would give them access to the political heart of the revolutionary government, and American forces worked to deny them that access.
The river's long history as a military waterway extended beyond the Revolution. George Dewey's flagship in the Spanish-American War was at one point berthed on the north side of Pier 11, at Front and Race Streets in Philadelphia, along the Delaware River,[8] a later reminder of the river's enduring association with American naval and military history. During the Revolution itself, the river served as both barrier and highway, shaping the movement of armies and the strategic calculations of both sides.
Legacy
Delaware's participation in the American Revolution established the foundation of its identity as one of the original states of the new republic. The state's political leaders had engaged the question of independence seriously and had ultimately committed Delaware to the revolutionary cause. Its soldiers had served in a Continental Army that fought through years of hardship to achieve independence. And the river that bore the state's name had become the setting for the most celebrated single military operation of the entire war.
The legacy of the Revolution in Delaware is commemorated through historical institutions, annual re-enactments, and the ongoing work of organizations such as the American Revolution Institute, which has mounted dedicated exhibitions exploring Delaware's specific contributions to the revolutionary struggle.[9] Educational materials covering Delaware's role in the Revolution have also been produced to bring this history to broader audiences, reflecting continued interest in the state's place within the larger story of American independence.[10]
Delaware's experience in the Revolution — its political deliberations, its military service, its geographic centrality — forms a coherent chapter in the larger history of how thirteen disparate colonies became a nation. The First State, as Delaware is known for being the first to ratify the United States Constitution, entered the revolutionary period as a small colony navigating complex loyalties and emerged from it as a committed participant in the American experiment.