WI Delaware stays part of Pennsylvania

Depends on what aspect of American / U.S. Regional History is to be impacted?
  • No change to the rise of the DuPont Corporation
  • Dover Air Force Base may or may not exist today depending how on Congressional and Senatorial military appropriations are allocated
  • Roth IRA could be a figment of our imagination.
  • V.P. Biden could have never existed and become nothing more than a school teacher in Scranton, PA.
  • Would a 50th alternative State been selected?
  • No lucrative corporate tax laws to be established in DE. Some other state would have figured out the benefit to being the official P.O. Box for corporations.
  • Scrapple would still be a regional delicacy.
  • I-95 would probably not have gone through Wilmington and the Susquehanna Bridge not been built with I-95 running farther north.
As an alternative, I have always wondered what would the Delmarva Peninsula would have been as a stand alone state?
 
Depends on what aspect of American / U.S. Regional History is to be impacted?
  • No change to the rise of the DuPont Corporation
  • Dover Air Force Base may or may not exist today depending how on Congressional and Senatorial military appropriations are allocated
  • Roth IRA could be a figment of our imagination.
  • V.P. Biden could have never existed and become nothing more than a school teacher in Scranton, PA.
  • Would a 50th alternative State been selected?
  • No lucrative corporate tax laws to be established in DE. Some other state would have figured out the benefit to being the official P.O. Box for corporations.
  • Scrapple would still be a regional delicacy.
  • I-95 would probably not have gone through Wilmington and the Susquehanna Bridge not been built with I-95 running farther north.
As an alternative, I have always wondered what would the Delmarva Peninsula would have been as a stand alone state?

All this would be butterflied away.
 
What if Delaware remained as three Pennsylvania counties? It was always intended to be part of the original grant to Penn.

Not that this is at all likely.

Depends on what aspect of American / U.S. Regional History is to be impacted?
  • No change to the rise of the DuPont Corporation
  • Dover Air Force Base may or may not exist today depending how on Congressional and Senatorial military appropriations are allocated
  • Roth IRA could be a figment of our imagination.
  • V.P. Biden could have never existed and become nothing more than a school teacher in Scranton, PA.
  • Would a 50th alternative State been selected?
  • No lucrative corporate tax laws to be established in DE. Some other state would have figured out the benefit to being the official P.O. Box for corporations.
  • Scrapple would still be a regional delicacy.
  • I-95 would probably not have gone through Wilmington and the Susquehanna Bridge not been built with I-95 running farther north.
As an alternative, I have always wondered what would the Delmarva Peninsula would have been as a stand alone state?

Yep. And Delmarva as a stand-alone state(Lenape, maybe?), could change some things, depending on the circumstances afterwards.

All this would be butterflied away.

Not necessarily, though. I mean, it very well could be, of course, but it's not totally inevitable.
 
Not that this is at all likely.



Yep. And Delmarva as a stand-alone state(Lenape, maybe?), could change some things, depending on the circumstances afterwards.



Not necessarily, though. I mean, it very well could be, of course, but it's not totally inevitable.

State of Lenape would be a good alternative to a stand-alone Delaware. In retrospect, not all of the items listed would be butterflied away. DuPont would most likely remain. Their gunpowder works were already in place at the time of statehood. Scrapple was a mainstay of the Pennsylvania Dutch and would still be a local delicacy independent of state lines.
 
These days, very little, save some some solidly Democratic members of Congress. Delaware has spent most of the last 70 years as a glorified Philadelphia suburb and tax haven.
 
These days, very little, save some some solidly Democratic members of Congress. Delaware has spent most of the last 70 years as a glorified Philadelphia suburb and tax haven.

It would be quite different, the butterflies would long have caught up. It would be a different world.
 
The counties on the Delaware were not administered conventionally. Rather, "Pennsylvania and the counties on the Delaware" could arguably have been described as a loose (and unsuccessful) confederation. Averting that arrangement might be the way to get ongoing union, or perhaps a more functional confederal relationship could have lasted or even expanded.
 
These days, very little, save some some solidly Democratic members of Congress. Delaware has spent most of the last 70 years as a glorified Philadelphia suburb and tax haven.
Make that "Delaware north of the canal" and not even all of that.

Delaware south of the C & D Canal is markedly different: more rural / small town-oriented with a pseudo-southern outlook (e.g., the presence of NASCAR at Dover Downs; the local accents in Sussex County are definitely not Rust Belt accents).

Then there's the area in the northwestern corner of the state; i.e., around Newark, a classic college town complete with tree-lined movie set college campus (I should know: I'm a UD alum). True, there is commuter train service to/from Philadelphia at Newark but not many use it; we're talking ~40 miles each way with lots of intermediate stops. In years gone by it was also a nexus of Du Pont employees.

Northeast of Newark / northwest of Wilmington is an area that's almost an extension of Chester County, PA, complete with rolling hills, stone walls, and the like. This is the area where the du Pont family branches have their estates, like Granogue, home of Irenée du Pont (yes, he's still alive in his early 90s).

Wilmington and the northeastern corner probably best qualifies as a Philly suburb: much easier to commute to/from Philadelphia there (see, for example, the commuter station at Claymont, DE).

True about having Dem members of Congress. Wasn't always that way, though. Pete du Pont was a solid GOP congressman and ran for POTUS (wouldn't have been half-bad, IMO, but he had a lot of heavy hitter competition). Then there were senators Boggs and Roth, both well thought of in the GOP. The last notable GOP member of the congressional delegation that I remember was Mike Castle, whom I believe was also governor for a while. But you're right: these days, Delaware is almost as blue as Maryland.

If you were to do away with the state of Delaware, the area north of the canal would probably best be appended to Pennsylvania as "New Castle County", while the balance should be appended to Maryland. The Canal is indeed that sharp of a demarcation.
 
The counties on the Delaware were not administered conventionally. Rather, "Pennsylvania and the counties on the Delaware" could arguably have been described as a loose (and unsuccessful) confederation. Averting that arrangement might be the way to get ongoing union, or perhaps a more functional confederal relationship could have lasted or even expanded.
And don't forget the area known as "the wedge" in later years, a sort-of-triangular parcel of land between the northeast corner of Maryland and the arc of the state line between Pennsylvania and Delaware. It was in dispute for years as to who owned it--and as a result neither PA nor DE really enforced the law there. It was kind of no-man's-land until it was awarded to DE, and an east/west boundary extended east from the northeastern corner of MD to intersect the arc.
 
One of Delaware's representative to the Constitutional Convention was vociferous on the small states side and a leader for equal representation.
 
"One fewer slave state in Congress."

Excellent point! So this will butterfly away either Maine or Vermont.

Not necessarily-Prior the 1840s & '50s, the free/slave state divide wasn't necessarily an all important one-even Missouri could have been admitted as a free state without too much trouble.

It would be quite different, the butterflies would long have caught up. It would be a different world.

Again, it could, but it depends-contrary to popular belief, plausibility is actually not entirely dependent on divergence(or even really all that close to it); it is more than possible, for example, to have an Interstate Highway System and the Emergency Broadcast System with a POD in the 1780s, as long as the storyline that develops afterwards allows for such.(and, on the flip side, divergence doesn't always = plausible.)

One of Delaware's representative to the Constitutional Convention was vociferous on the small states side and a leader for equal representation.

Who was he, btw? Not sure I've ever heard this before.
 
We get a few more Democratic seats in the Pennsylvania General Assembly but not enough for the really cool shit like legal weed. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
Jacob Broom. If memory serves, during the small state-big state standoff he lost his cool and said that if big states did not do right by the little states, the little states would seek foreign allies. Which shocked the big states and brought them to the negotiating table.

Dickinson from Delaware was also influential and active in the Convention.
 
Most of you guys are thinking way too contemporary. One of my biggest problems with this group is that is continually fails to recognize the importance of local history and the butterflies it may cause. Although I don't know much about this topic (sadly) there are a few questions I can come up with:

1) How goes it impact the development of *Delaware if it remains part of Pennsylvania

2) What are the impacts upon Pennsylvania's politics and culture by having *Delaware remain part of it.

3) What does having one less slave state do to the balance of the US in the antebellum period.

These are three small questions that have large implications. Lets explore them!
 
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