On the last day of October 1864 Congress granted statehood to Nevada, just in time for November’s presidential election. As expected, the voters of the new state gave their Electoral College votes to President Abraham Lincoln, who was running for a second term.

A decades-old law required that any territory asking to become a state had to have 60,000 residents. Nevada’s population was not even close to that number. The 1860 census had counted only 6,857 people in the area!

And even though Congress expanded Nevada’s borders after 1864 and new residents kept showing up to prospect for gold and si...