DuPont and the Civil War
A Delaware Story That History Rarely Tells Fully
On June 25, 2026, from 6 to 7:30 p.m., Hagley Library hosts one of the most substantive historical programs of the summer. DuPont and the Civil War brings together local historical interpreters Bob Booker and Tom Stack to examine Delaware’s role in the Civil War — a story that is more complex, more consequential, and more morally ambiguous than most Americans realize.
The program takes place in the Copeland Room at the Hagley Library, 298 Buck Road, Wilmington. Set your GPS accordingly — the library entrance is separate from the main museum.
Delaware in the Civil War: A Border State’s Impossible Position
Delaware occupies a uniquely uncomfortable position in Civil War history. It was a slave state — one of only four that remained in the Union — yet it never seceded, never joined the Confederacy, and supplied soldiers and material to the Union cause throughout the war. Delaware’s enslaved population was small by Southern standards (fewer than 2,000 people by 1860, most of them in Sussex County), but slavery was legal, practiced, and politically protected within the state’s borders until the 13th Amendment abolished it nationally in December 1865.
Delaware’s legislature actually rejected the 13th Amendment in 1865 — and did not formally ratify it until 1901, 36 years after the fact. The state was, in the most literal sense, on the wrong side of history on the question of slavery, even while fighting on the right side of the war.
The du Pont Family and the DuPont Company
Into this contradictory situation stepped the du Pont family and their Brandywine powder works — and their role was decisive in ways that go well beyond Delaware…