Very few of us would consider a telegraph to be cutting-edge technology today, but in 1864, it absolutely was.  

In the mid-19th century, such technology was still a luxury for most of the world and using it wasn’t exactly cheap. Like the early days of texting — when “roaming” charges and data fees could quickly bankrupt a customer — every transmission sent over a telegraph line carried a hefty charge. A brief 10-word message could cost as much as $7 in certain circumstances. 

And yet, out of political desperation, the territory of Nevada used this expensive tech to transmit its new, complex and lengthy state Constitution to the nation’s capital just a few short years after the first transcontinental telegraph line was completed. 

In early 1864, the Civil War was still raging, re-election was looming for President Abraham Lincoln, and with a possible three-way race for the White House, it was clear a few more “safe” Republican votes were needed to ensure he would be able to accomplish his party’s abolitionist agenda. 

To be fair, while it sounds on the surface like mere partisan gerrymandering of the electoral college, the political calculus of creating a new state to win re-election wasn’t entirely self-serving for Lincoln. As Assistant Secretary of War Charles Dana later wrote, the president understood that creating a new Republican-friendly state would be a far less costly way to ensure an end to the Civil War than raising “another million soldiers” to keep fighting the Confederacy — and he was undoubtedly correct. 

After all, Lincoln was trying to not only win the war and reunite a nation more divided than ever, but he was also looking to constitutionally ban slavery going forward with the 13th Amendment. The pedestrian concern of electoral strategy just happened to be necessary because, as always, everything comes down to politics — even those things we believe to be above partisan pettiness. 

And so, a sparsely populated mountainous territory in the West suddenly became the focal point of American politics as the president set out to welcome the overwhelmingly pro-Union territory into statehood. 

But it had to be done quickly. And even in the 1800s, “fast” wasn’t exactly how one might describe the cumbersome and deliberate democratic mechanisms of our republic. 

For its part, despite the distractions of war, Congress acted with relative haste. By May 1864, it had passed an act to enable Nevada’s inclusion to the union, provided that the territory was able to satisfy certain criteria such as outlawing slavery within its borders and relinquishing “unappropriated public land” to the federal government — a provision that would eventually make it possible for the federal government to control more than 80 percent of our state’s land. 

However, getting Nevadans to cobble together an agreeable constitution wasn’t going to be as easy as it sounded. Much like today, even generally agreeable policy questions tend to fall victim to political infighting, and they had already tried once before and failed to create a Constitution in 1863. The delegation of territorial leaders, for example, couldn’t even initially agree on a name for their new state, let alone a complex founding document to guide its future development.

In July 1864, Nevada leaders tried again, this time effectively plagiarizing much of their new Constitution from the state of California — proving that, as a state, we were already emulating our western neighbors on important policy matters long before “Don’t California my Nevada” became a political bumper sticker. 

By early September, voters overwhelmingly approved the draft, and the only thing left to do was get a copy to the president so we could officially join the union. The problem, however, was that time was running short and “next-day delivery” wasn’t exactly an option in the Old West. 

So, one copy of our newly formed Constitution was mailed to California, where it would set sail for Panama, be carried by mule to the Gulf Coast, then shipped by boat through the Gulf and up the East Coast to Washington, D.C. — ostensibly without being blown up by a trigger-happy Confederate Navy. Another copy was to be carried by courier across the vast expanses of Utah, over the Rocky Mountains, across the Great Plains, through the battle-ravaged states waging war with one another and, eventually, to our nation’s capital without being lost, looted or damaged along the way. 

Unfortunately for the hopeful leaders of our burgeoning state, neither route was successful. On Oct. 25, a telegraph arrived for Nevada’s territorial Gov. James Nye, notifying him that the president had still not received the territory’s proposed Constitution. 

With mere days remaining before it would be too late to be of any use, there was only one piece of technology that might still provide a breath of hope for those who saw Nevada as a path to ensure a Republican victory over the issue of slavery: the telegraph. 

On the night of Oct. 26, 1864, a team of transcribers, telegraphers and territorial leaders convened in a small room in Carson City to begin the arduous task of translating the handwritten document into a series of dots and dashes. It would then be sent by wire to a telegraph station 500 miles away in Salt Lake City, where it would then be relayed to Chicago, Philadelphia and, finally, the nation’s capital. 

Consider it a complex game of “telephone” in Morse code — done on a device more commonly used to send short, punchy messages than some lengthy document filled to the brim with legalese and constitutional fluff.  

It took 12 hours for two telegraphers to transcribe the 16,543-word document and transmit it to Salt Lake City. The unsuspecting telegrapher on the receiving end, deluged by the incessant taps and beeps transmitting into his ear, requested the assistance of at least two other people to make it through the overnight ordeal. 

From there, what was likely the world’s lengthiest telegraph message was passed on to other unsuspecting telegraphers nearly 1,600 miles away and, ultimately, to the War Department’s official Washington, D.C., headquarters — where resources were diverted from the war effort to receive and translate it in time.  

The final bill for the desperate, last-minute embrace of modern technology was an astronomical $4,303.27, equivalent to nearly $90,000 in today’s dollars. 

But it worked. By Oct. 31, 1864, Nevadans officially had a state of their own. 

Not only did Lincoln get re-elected, but his proposed 13th Amendment also went on to be ratified after passing through the U.S. House — our new congressman voting in support of it. 

Sure, the cost for sending that cumbersome telegraph was eye-watering, but it was also necessary to help Lincoln subdue one of the most egregious and vicious inequities that plagued our early republic — and, as a pleasant bonus, it gave birth to a state that more than 3 million of us now call home. 

Clearly, it was money well spent.  

Michael Schaus is a communications and branding expert based in Las Vegas, Nevada, and founder of Schaus Creative LLC — an agency dedicated to helping organizations, businesses and activists tell their story and motivate change. He has more than a decade of experience in public affairs commentary, having worked as a news director, columnist, political humorist, and most recently as the director of communications for a public policy think tank. Follow him on Twitter @schausmichael or on Substack @creativediscourse.