I've written about this project before. But from now, once a week, the essays which are written will be posted here and, as soon as I have a suitable space worked out, I'll be recording the essays.
Every fourth week the subject will be a state of the Union in order of them joining
Anyone who has any input on the essays, either corrections or additional information, add a note and I'll look to include it.
Please, enjoy.
Around the world the date July fourth is well known and not for the appearance, in ten-fifty-four, of a supernova whose remnants we now call the Crab Nebula, or the birth of fourteenth century Japanese Shogun Ashikaga Yoshiakira, nor even the twenty-twelve discovery of particles consistent with the long theorized Higgs Boson.
No, if we ask people around the world what they link July fourth with, the most popular answer will be the American Declaration of Independence, that singular document by which thirteen colonies took common cause against the country and royal authority that claimed dominion over them.
Only, for Delaware, independence from Britain and the colony of Pennsylvania, came a few weeks earlier, on June fifteenth.
Yes, a full nineteen days before anyone else, Delaware celebrated its independence, and also creation as a state.
With this event Delaware put to rest a transient history which had seen its land under the control of Dutch and then Swedish colonists. From England exerting dominion in sixteen-sixty-four the area had been under the stewardship of New York, Maryland, and then Pennsylvania.
During this latter period the determined and deliberate displacement of the area’s original inhabitants, Lenape, began. Today their descendants live in Oklahoma and Wisconsin, almost as far as possible from the sea as continental America provides.
Although latterly the three counties which comprise Delaware, Kent, New Castle, and Sussex, were part of Pennsylvania they already cared for their own governance. The three counties had become part of William Penn’s new colony through a dubious land deal which gave access to the sea from the colony’s founding in sixteen-eighty-two. The larger portion of the state wanted to do things without having to worry about these Lower Three Counties and, by seventeen-oh-four both areas had their own legislative bodies, although they shared a governor.
Later, when the war for independence was finally won, the process of forging an entirely new nation could begin and, while the date of its writing is not as well known around the earth, the Constitution of the United States is recognised as a paramount tool used in the founding of the enterprise.
Maybe it’s apposite that, as the first state to declare independence from Britain, Delaware was the first state to ratify the new constitution, doing so on December seventh, seventeen-eighty-seven.
That newly ratified constitution laid out a process of bi-annual elections and those elections give Sussex County in Delaware one of the most singular election events anywhere in America.
Even today there aren’t many people in Sussex County, a little under two-hundred-forty thousand by the twenty-twenty census, back in the late eighteenth century it was under twenty-one thousand. Back then the county seat of Georgetown was the only place you could cast a vote and, every two years, the electorate would travel in to do that. Two days later was Return Day, when verified election results were announced, and many folks came to hear them. Possibly, for those living towards the edge of the county, they stayed up in town and attended to business matters that we today would do via the phone or internet. Even later when the county was split into smaller voting precincts the tradition of the results being announced in Georgetown two days after election continued.
Over time it became something of a holiday, a time where businesses shut, bands marched, food was eaten, drink imbibed. To look at it, there is something of another great American tradition about Return Day, that of the state fair. But this Sussex County tradition is far older than Delaware’s popular state fair, which was held for the first time only in nineteen-twenty.
You may be chafing at the term, Return Day, the ear demanding that an ‘s’ be added to ‘return’ to make things, well, sound right.
Don’t you dare!
Return Day it was, Return Day it is, and Return Day it will remain.
Of course, we all make mistakes, and a great way to recognise that is to come together in friendliness and bury the hatchet, as it were, and Georgetown folks are happy to forgive an occasional slip-of-the tongue in this matter.
Burying the hatchet is a thing they’re used to doing. They do it every two years on, yes, you guessed, Return Day. The winners and losers of the elections parade round town in carriages, the losers facing backwards so as to better receive a little light opprobrium from the gathered crowd. At the end of this parade the opponents meet up, ceremonially clasp a hatchet between them, and thrust it into a barrel where it is then covered with sand, thus signifying the end of any rancour engendered by the cut-and-thrust of electioneering.
Maybe it’s a tradition which other states should consider adopting.
Looking at Delaware it is easy to see a state that represents an ideal of the United States as it may wish to be.
It’s a state which is still well represented by the images on its coat of arms. Here we see a farmer, sheaf of wheat, ear of corn, and an ox, all aspects of the agricultural idyll which even today is a large part of the state. Then there’s a strip of blue and a sailing frigate to symbolise the Delaware River, and the trade and boat building industry which it supports even today.
When we add in the community and friendliness well illustrated by Return Day, the State Fair, or Lewes Tulip Festival each spring then the idea of Delaware is extended.
And what of food? By the meals it feeds itself and strangers a land can be judged in ways few other mediums are capable of achieving.
Scrapple is not exclusive to Delaware, but any place that makes a version of a shared staple will tell you the one they make is the original or if not, then the best. What is Scrapple? I hear many asking. It’s a food in the best traditions of rural communities everywhere in that it uses ingredients which are often discarded. It shares a heritage with all manner of sausages, Scottish haggis, and Romanian drob. Containing offal from a pig, cornmeal, flour, egg, and spices it may not sound appealing, but after being formed into a loaf shape, sliced into thin strips, and then gently fried it becomes perfect with egg and toast for a good hearty breakfast.
Possibly the sound of offal for breakfast is off-putting, well there’s no need to fear. Locally grown or produced, vegetables, honey, and cheese can be found at any number of farmer’s markets around the state.
Of course, healthy eating is great, but sometimes you just want some fries and a soda, and when that time arrives Thrasher’s has you covered. In three locations through Rehoboth Beach you can can find lightly scrubbed potatoes cut into generous fries, and cooked in peanut oil. Douse them with salt and vinegar, and sit on the boardwalk enjoying the sunshine, sea breeze, and envious looks of passers-by.
And it would be easy to leave Delaware there. A small state, forty-ninth out of fifty by area; with few residents, forty-sixth out of fifty by population; some quirky historical facts; and natural attractions both coastal and bucolic - even if the highest point in the state (Ebright Azimuth) is under four-hundred-and-fifty feet.
But there is another aspect of the state worth considering, the number of corporations who claim it as their registered home.
By the end of twenty-twenty over one-million-six-hundred-thousand companies were registered in the state. In that same year four-hundred-and-ninety-four businesses carried out an Initial Public Offering of shares in America, nearly four-hundred-and-sixty of those were from entities registered in Delaware. Of the Fortune Five-hundred, the annual list of America’s largest companies by revenue, sixty-eight percent are registered as domiciled in Delaware, despite only one, Corteva, being headquartered there.
What does that flurry of figures mean?
Let’s consider that Coca-Cola and Apple, both worldwide names, are headquartered in Georgia and California respectively. The first in a twenty-nine story office block from the nineteen-seventies, the other a twenty-first century super-modern groundsrcaper.
Yet both of these huge companies are registered in Delaware for the purposes of tax.
And tax is the reason why, at the time of writing, there are seven-hundred thousand more companies registered in Delaware than residents live in the state.
Does this mean Delaware is awash with tax receipts from the huge levels of income all of these companies make? No. Neither Delaware, nor any state whose Fortune Five-hundred headquartered company registers there for tax purposes. And if every state is losing out on those tax returns that means the US as a whole is losing out.
So, how does Delaware benefit from all these companies, how did it come to have this tax-beneficial loophole, and why doesn’t similar tax rules by other states accrue them similar benefits?
While tax income from companies may be light, the sheer number of businesses incorporated in the state provides huge amounts of work for all manner of lawyers and attorneys. There are dense networks of companies who compete against each other, collaborate together, are linked and inter-twined, nested one-inside-another like matryoshka dolls.
As well as ever increasing numbers of corporations and constantly shifting alliances that all require legal services, there are changing laws and regulations which interact with each other in ways which make labyrinthine a synonym for straightforward.
All that legal work comes with hourly billings sufficient to keep many a firm in associates. And all those lawyers are based nearly mid-point between New York City and Washington D.C.
And that position is why Delaware dominates despite other states offering similar tax beneficial opportunities. A few hours south-west of a world financial hub, a few hours north-east of the people who make and influence the laws which affect the businesses catered for.
Which only leaves us one question. How did a state known for agriculture and boat-building come to be the nations top tax-haven?
The responsibility lies with Woodrow Wilson. Before serving eight years as the twenty-eighth president of the USA, he was New Jersey’s thirty-fourth Governor.
Wilson was new to state politics when he ran for Governor, only agreeing to to do so if there would be no pledges required by supporters, no campaign promises made in back rooms. Such assurances were received.
Wilson set about changing business practices which, since the early-to-mid eighteen-hundreds had given the Garden State a reputation for growing weeds which strangled the growth of other plants, stealing their resources and territory. While Wilson’s changes were unpopular with the corporations affected, the state as a whole appreciated the changes.
And those changes opened up a gap in the market, a gap which Delaware swooped into fill. By the nineteen-twenties companies were pouring into the state, and continue to do so.
Towards the end of the twentieth century, the use of shell companies became supercharged and in the twenty-sixteen Panama Papers leak it was discovered one single office address near the Brandywine River in Wilmington was home to two-hundred-and-eight-five-thousand of these companies which have, to quote US securities law, ‘no or nominal operations; and either no or nominal assets, assets consisting of cash and cash equivalents, or assets consisting of any amount of cash and cash equivalents and nominal other assets.’
How does this fit with our view of Delaware, even of the United States?
The very founding of the nation rests on issues to do with tax and excise duties, so maybe it is fitting that the first state to declare its independence from Britain, and to sign the Constitution, continues to offer freedoms from taxation, even if other parts of the country would wish differently.
words by stuartcturnbull. Picture licenced from Kirsten Alana and worked in Canva