The original Constitution approved for Nevada in 1864 remains in effect today. Based on the 1849 founding document of neighboring California, the 44 handwritten 17 x 24 inch pages were signed by secretary William M. Gillespie and members of the Nevada Constitutional Convention. Today, this document exists as part of the Nevada Revised Statutes, which is considered the “official” copy for legal use.
Nevadans’ approved their new Constitution on September 14th, 1864, with the votes collected, counted and approved on September 27th. Territorial Governor James W. Nye sent the canvass of votes and certified copies of the Constitution by Overland Mail. On October 24th, 1864, Governor Nye received a telegram saying the canvass of votes had been received, but not the Constitution. President Lincoln would not approve statehood until he’d seen the document. With only two weeks before the national election, Horace Carpentier, General Superintendent of the Overland Telegraph Company’s Placerville to Salt Lake City District, suggested that Nye telegraph the document to Washington.
James H. Guild, the California Telegraph Company’s best telegrapher, began sending the 16,543 word document from Carson City to Salt Lake City on October 26th, 1864. There was no direct link from Carson City to Washington so the telegram had to be transcribed at Salt Lake. The message would then be sent to Chicago and Philadelphia in this way before the final receiver could transcribe and deliver the 175-page document to President Lincoln. The telegram suspended the receipt of war messages in the Office of the U.S. Military Telegraph in the War Department for more than five hours. At the time, the Nevada Constitution was the longest telegraph in history 
and has only been surpassed by the English Standard Version of the New Testament (118,000 words) in 1881.
Lincoln received the Constitution two days after the first transmission at around 10:45pm. The last sheet of the message indicated the cost of transmission to be $4,303.27. This is equivalent to around $84,363 in 2023. Seward sent the President’s proclamation of Nevada statehood by return telegram on October 30th. Since Nye was away campaigning for Lincoln, the telegram received in Carson City at 9:00pm was forwarded to the Governor at Unionville. Nye then responded at midnight ordering that a proclamation be issued at once so that statehood would be official as of October 31st, 1864.
A facsimile of the original Nevada Consitution can be viewed on the second floor, north end, of the Nevada State Library and Archives building. The original document once on exhibit in the same display case is now safely stored in a special vault in the Nevada State Archives.
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