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Delaware is a state located on the Atlantic Coast in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Delaware was the first of the original thirteen American colonies to ratify the Constitution and become a state.
The oldest black church in the country was chartered in Delaware by freed slave Peter Spencer in 1813 as the "Union Church of Africans." This was renamed the African Union First Colored Methodist Protestant Church and Connection, more commonly known as the A.U.M.P. Church. Begun by Spencer in 1814, the Big August Quarterly still draws together people in a religious and cultural festival, the oldest such cultural festival in the nation.
At the onset of the American Civil War, Delaware was only nominally a slave state, and it remained in the Union. Delaware voted against secession on January 3, 1861. As the governor said, Delaware had been the first state to embrace the Union by ratifying the Constitution and would be the last to leave it.
