A grand celebration

gress. Considering the rejection they received, one can only imagine the derisive jokes passed around congressional offices as the Arizonans went home with their tails between their legs.

Seven years later, they got even more dramatic, demonstrating with blood and guts and their lives just how serious they were about statehood. In what is perhaps the most heroic action to gain statehood in the history of the nation, thousands of Arizona men answered the call for a volunteer army in 1898 to fight in the nation’s first overseas war: the SpanishAmerican War.

Not only did Arizona have thousands more volunteers than could be taken, they were the very first to volunteer and became Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. The Arizona troops were led by Prescott Capt. William “Bucky” O’neill, who was killed and whose tombstone says it all: “Who would not die for a new star on the flag.”

But even the brave men of Arizona weren’t enough for Congress. If they thought statehood would be their reward, they were 14 years too early.

The first time Washington seriously entertained the idea of admitting Arizona was in 1903, when the chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories proposed it be combined with New Mexico and admitted as one state. They called it “jointure,” and while New Mexico liked the idea, Arizona didn’t, voting against it in 1906 by 16,265 to 3,141.

“We prefer to remain a territory indefinitely rather than lose our identity,” read a petition. The Phoenix City Council Arizona’s celebration was epic. As President Taft signed the official papers in Washington, D.C., at 10:23 a.m. on that Wednesday, a telegraph key brought home the message. Bisbee set off a stack of 48 sticks of dynamite, while in Globe, that magic number came from a cannon. In Tucson, sirens at the waterworks announced the news while the University of Arizona ROTC cadets executed drills. In Prescott, they raised a toast and shot off pistols on Whiskey Row while Arizona-born boys and girls helped plant a native white oak in the town plaza.

In Phoenix, George W.P. Hunt walked from his downtown hotel to the state Capitol and was sworn in as Arizona’s first governor. Acclaimed orator William Jennings Bryan spoke for two hours at the Capital ceremonies. A huge parade included virtually every patriotic and fraternal organization in the state. A cannonade of 48 howitzer salutes on City Hall Plaza was so loud, it unsettled horses and broke windows and was halted at 38.

At its first election after statehood in the fall of1912, Arizona voters reinstated the recall of judges into the state Constitution. And, by a healthy margin, they gave Arizona women the right to vote, eight years before national suffrage.

It was the first time, but certainly not the last, that the United States would realize that it had admitted one ornery state to its union.