A Border State Divided: Delaware's Civil War
Near Rehoboth Beach, Delaware
This Civil War monument speaks to a hard truth about Delaware. Though it never left the Union, Delaware was a slaveholding border state, and its loyalties were genuinely split.
When the war came, Delaware men enlisted on both sides. Most fought for the Union, but a small number of Delawareans joined the Confederate army. In Sussex County, in the southern part of the state where Southern sympathies ran strongest, the war divided towns and even prominent families against one another.
Near here in Georgetown stands a privately raised Confederate memorial, unveiled in two thousand seven by the local historical society. It has drawn lasting controversy, including the loss of state funding over the Confederate flag flown beside it. Together these markers record a state that fed soldiers to both armies of a divided nation.
