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Wednesday is a day to give some thought to our place in history. It's the real anniversary of our statehood, not the three day weekend we just observed. We know each Nevada Day we’re celebrating our statehood, but there’s a lot of misconception about why we became a state in 1864. Generations of Nevadans have always been told we were admitted because the union needed our gold and silver to finance the Civil War. That’s what you will see in text books. It’s what I was taught in Nevada history class at Churchill County High those many years ago and my teacher was the mother of a Nevada governor and considered an authority on our history.

In fact, by 1864 the war was already winding down and our mineral wealth had been making its contribution to the union for three years. We were a federal territory already part of the union. President Lincoln made sure of that.

But in 1864 Lincoln did have need of Nevada becoming a state. He was facing the likelihood of a divisive three-way

re-election battle and the possibility of the outcome being decided in the House of Representatives. If that happened he

 needed every vote possible and was confident Nevada ’s congressman would cast his for him. As it turned out, Nevada

 played no special role in Lincoln ’s re-election. James Fremont withdrew from the race. Lincoln won going away.

There was a second reason Lincoln wanted us in Congress and that was the passage of the 13^th Amendment abolishing

 slavery. Our congressman voted yes and Nevada ratified the amendment in early 1865. Alas, our Senators arrived in

  Washington to late to vote on the amendment, but one of them, William Stewart, was a key player in passing the 15^th

 amendment which gave African-Americans the right to vote.  Our part in these historic events, it seems to me, is a

 statehood fact we can genuinely be proud of, certainly more than the fiction that they just needed our gold and silver.

 a school girl repeated the gold and silver story. The reporter didn’t recognize the error at the time, but others did and we

 did a follow up correcting the error. Angry teachers and parents accused us of deliberately embarrassing the poor girl,

 which, of course, was never our intent. We took our lumps and made our apologies, but let the story stand. After all it

wasn’t the little girl’s fault or even her teachers, they relied on the text book and the text book was wrong. To my

knowledge it probably still is.

My point in telling this story is that history matters and I hope when you next hear that version of Nevada ’s statehood tale,

 you’ll correct it. Just do it gently. By the way, if you want to check this story or a number of other common myths about

  Nevada history,there’s a good resource at the State Archives. Here’s the e-address: http://dmla.clan.lib.nv.us/docs/nsla/archives/myth/

It’s the work of Guy Rocha, who has done a great job over the years debunking myths and illuminating all that’s true and

 great about our state. He’s our go-to-guy on stuff like this.