Nevada, Territory of (U.S.A.)

Nevada is organized as a United States territory on March 2, 1861.

Prior to the creation of the Nevada Territory, the area was part of western Utah Territory and was known as Washoe, after the native Washoe people.

The separation of the territory from Utah is important to the federal government because of its political leanings, while the population itself is keen to be separated because of animosity (and sometimes violence) between non-Mormons in Nevada and Mormons from the rest of the Utah Territory.

The region of present Nevada in the early 1860s has seen the end of an Indian war, the great Comstock mining boom of 1859 in Virginia City and the coming of the Civil War.

The provisional territorial government had led to the creation of Nevada Territory by Congress in 1861.

The pragmatic attempts to establish workable frontier institutions had failed and the paternalistic territorial system had been welcomed.

The Comstock Lode, discovered in 1858 by James Finney in Carson County, had opened the era of silver mining in Nevada, and has attracted thousands of miners—most from California.

Disputes over the legal limits of a claim had soon gone to court, as the Law of the Apex, used to determine those limits, is unworkable for the deep ore bodies in the Comstock.

The legal and judicial system of Carson County is unprepared for the tremendous demands placed on it.

Judges are underpaid and underqualified, bribery of witnesses and jurors is commonplace, vague record-keeping creates nearly insurmountable difficulties with property titles, and evidence is often destroyed.

Though workable mining laws are still needed, the resignation of the entire territorial supreme court in 1864 does cause litigation to stop and allows mining work to resume.

Statehood comes in 1864 following a Carson City convention (July 4–28) and a public vote on September 7 (the population of 6,857 in 1860 will increase to 42,941 in 1870), although Nevada has far fewer than the 40,000 people usually required.

Nevada Territory has sent twelve hundred men to fight for the Union.

In May, 1863, Nevada had raised a battalion of cavalry the 1st Battalion Nevada Volunteer Cavalry.

In the summer of 1864, a battalion of infantry, First Battalion, Nevada Volunteers, Infantry had been mustered in.

The adjutant-general of Nevada reports that since the beginning of the Civil War, thirty-four officers and eleven hundred and fifty-eight enlisted men had voluntarily enlisted in the service of the United States from Nevada.

These troops are not used against the southern armies, but protect the central overland route and settlements on the frontier from the Indians.

With the units of California Volunteers engaged in the same service, they make incursions into Indian country, exploring large sections of territory that had never been entered by American forces, and have frequent skirmishes with the Indians.

However Nevada's main contribution to the war is the Comstock Lode, whose silver, totaling $400 million, finances the Union Civil War effort to defeat the southern states.

A common belief is that Nevada achieves early statehood due to its silver, but as the Union already has Nevada's silver due to Nevada being its territory, its statehood is due to political concerns, not economic.

There are several sympathizers to the Confederate States of America in Nevada during the War; in fact, of the "Pacific Coast" states, none have more southern supporters.

In Virginia City, in particular, sentiment towards the warring sides is split evenly.

However, in strict military fashion, any strong sentiment that is pro-Confederate is struck down, as Union army soldiers arrest he sympathizers and jail them at Fort Churchill.

The only time a Confederate flag is flown in the state is at a stone saloon, and defended by gunpoint by one of the saloon's owners until the owner's partner convinces him to change the flag to the United States flag before troops from Fort Churchill force the matter.

This causes the commander of Fort Churchill to feel additional paranoia about pro-Confederate sympathies in mining camps, and throughout the war Nevada will be under martial law.

One organization particularly pro-Union is the Virginia City Fire Department.

Many of them are originally from New York, and have strong feelings for the New York Fire Zouaves, who many had known when they lived back east.

When news had arrived of the Union defeat at the First Battle of Manassas, with the New York Fire Zouaves in particular suffering heavy casualties, it had been determined by the Virginia City firemen that they would book no celebrations by pro-Confederates, and they had bullied any southern sympathizer they met that day by fist and weapons.

President Lincoln wants an additional Northern state that will presumably vote for his reelection, and help force pro-Northern ideas into new amendments to the United States Constitution.

Nevada's entry into full statehood in the United States has been expedited by Union sympathizers, who are so eager to gain statehood for Nevada that they rush to send the entire state constitution by telegraph to the United States Congress before the presidential election, as they did not believe that sending it by train would guarantee that it would arrive on time.

The constitution had been sent October 26–27, 1864, just two weeks before the election on November 7, 1864.

The transmission had taken two days; it consisted of 16,543 words and cost $4303.27 ($59,294.92 in 2010 dollars) to send.

It is, at the time, the longest telegraph transmission ever made, a record it will heold for seventeen years, until a copy of the 118,000-word English Standard Version of the New Testament is sent by telegraph on May 22, 1881.

Eight days prior to the presidential election of 1864, Nevada becomes the 36th state in the union.

Statehood had been rushed to the date of October 31 to help ensure Abraham Lincoln's reelection on November 8 and post-Civil War Republican dominance in Congress, as Nevada's mining-based economy ties it to the more industrialized Union. (As it turns out, however, Lincoln and the Republicans will win the election handily, and do not need Nevada's help.)

Nevada has fewer than forty thousand inhabitants when it gains statehood, far fewer than the initial population of any other state (though this is not a legal barrier to statehood).