Battle birth

In the spring of 1864, Nevada Territory governor James Nye penned a letter to U.S. Secretary of State William Seward.

“In almost every town in the territory,” Nye wrote, “substantial improvements in every branch of industry are made, giving us quite the appearance of an old settled country. Business is becoming thoroughly systemized, and carries on with a vigor I never witnessed in any other locality. Obstacles that would seem insurmountable in many places, here seem to only quicken the zeal and energies of our people. They ply themselves to their removal with a will absolutely irresistible.”

A month later, President Lincoln forwarded the letter to Congress. Things were going well.

Nye’s report is so carefully and exquisitely handwritten that when you see it, you can almost picture him nodding a little as he writes, or pausing to dip his pen in ink.

For a short time, the Nevada Museum of Art has the document displayed right now as part of The 36th Star: Nevada’s Journey from Territory to State. The exhibition to honor the sesquicentennial runs through Nov. 2 at the NMA’s Wiegand Gallery, and includes a variety of artifacts and photographs that harken back to battle-born beginnings.

The show’s headliner, though? Well, it’s bigger than Nevada.

It’s the Emancipation Proclamation. Which is to say it’s straight from the National Archives in Washington, D.C., flown here in secret, and no-siree-not-a-replica real.

The rather hefty addition will be viewable from Oct. 30 to Nov. 2 —a short window designed to limit the priceless papers’ exposure to light. A copy will serve as a stand-in until then. Once the curtain comes off, a timer is set to clock the museum, hour by hour.

“We do expect big crowds for this,” said NMA spokeswoman Amanda Horn.

As she spoke, a quiet sea of schoolchildren flowed through the exhibition’s three-room display. Several older couples milled about, too, studying colorful handmade flags and the historic Austin Flour Sack—a 50-pound bag that Austin, Nevada, resident Reuel Colt Gridley once schlepped around after losing a bet. His plight became a comical but gigantic fundraiser for Union soldiers’ medical care.

Then someone tried to snap a photo in the next room, and two docents had a polite meltdown. All this before the proclamation’s arrival.

The United States Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are known as the three Charters of Freedom, but some consider the document that led to slavery’s abolishment “to be almost the fourth charter,” said National Archives senior registrar James Zeender.

The papers rarely leave their home in D.C., and have only come to Nevada once, as part of the traveling Freedom Train exhibition that toured the country after World War II.

When visitors stand in line to see the proclamation, “The tears flow,” Zeender said. “It’s that sense of awe.”

A transcription of Nevada’s constitution, which made for a behemoth telegram to Abraham Lincoln, is also at the museum, alongside a variety of curious and important artifacts. And for the first time ever, famed Civil War photographer Timothy O’Sullivan’s battlefield images are sharing wall space with his pictures of a fledgling Nevada.

Made for documentation purposes during an early land survey, they are crisp, unadorned, and familiar-looking in a way that shouldn’t be surprising, but still is. After all, 150 years isn’t much time, geographically speaking.

“Many of these [items] haven’t been displayed in the state before, ever,” Horn said of the exhibition, “and certainly not in this capacity.”