page_title: Constitution of Nevada
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Constitution of Nevada / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Signature page for the telegraph transmission of the first Nevada State Constitution, October 1864. The handwritten annotation shows the word count (16,543) and cost ($4303.27).
context_page_description: The Constitution of the State of Nevada is the organic law of the state of Nevada, and the basis for Nevada's statehood as one of the United States.
context_section_description: The Nevada Constitution was created in 1864 at a convention on July 4 in Carson City.  The convention adjourned on July 28, was approved by public vote on the first Wednesday in September, and became effective on October 31, when on that date President Abraham Lincoln declared Nevada to be a state.
  Nevada's entry into full statehood in the United States was expedited.  Union sympathizers were so eager to gain statehood for Nevada that they rushed to send the entire state constitution by telegraph to the United States Congress before the presidential election and they did not believe that sending it by train would guarantee that it would arrive on time.  The constitution was sent October 26–27, 1864, just two weeks before the election on November 7, 1864.  The transmission took two days; it consisted of 16,543 words and cost $4,303.27 ($62,295.77 adjusted for 2012) to send. It was, at the time, the longest telegraph transmission ever made, a record it held for seventeen years, until a copy of the 118,000-word English Standard Version of the New Testament was sent by telegraph on  May 22, 1881.
caption: Signature page for the telegraph transmission of the first Nevada State Constitution, October 1864.  The handwritten annotation shows the word count (16,543) and cost ($4303.27).
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