Delaware state legislature votes overwhelmingly to stay in the Union

Southern commissioners had been pressuring Delaware, as a nominal slave state, to make a decision concerning secession.  On January 3, 1861, the Delaware state legislature voted overwhelmingly to remain in the Union, stating famously that "as Delaware was the first to adopt so will she be the last to abandon the Federal Constitution."  State leaders, among them Willard Saulsbury, the junior U.S. senator and Dickinson College class of 1842, then began to support efforts at compromise.  (By John Osborne)