On September 17, 1859, there was a bloodless coup in the United States of America. It began and ended in San Francisco when Joshua Norton published a proclamation in the San Francisco Bulletin stating “At the preemptory request of a large majority of the citizens of these United States, I Joshua Norton… declare and proclaim myself the Emperor of These United States…” The edict was signed: “Norton I, Emperor of the United States.” Thus was born one of our nation’s most interesting, entertainingly offbeat, and silently tragic folk heroes.
Norton reigned from the streets of San Francisco, spending his days eating at the finest restaurants in the city, sitting in his reserved box at the theater, and taking in lectures and debates at academic societies. He dressed in a simple blue coat which was adorned with gold buttons and a boutonniere. On formal occasions he would don a beaver cap with an ostrich feather standing tall above it and wear a cavalry sword on his hip. The Emperor’s political interests took him to the state capital in Sacramento where he would observe the state legislature and then return to San Francisco by train, which he rode for free. As the American Emperor, he lived a charmed life. But he also governed.
Norton issued regular proclamations which were published in the San Francisco papers. In early 1860 he officially dissolved the United States of America, and when the country and its government carried on, he banned Congress from assembling. After their continued intransigence, he ordered the U.S. Army to forcibly “clear the halls of Congress.” But his reign was not all negative. He once ordered the construction of a bridge connecting San Francisco and Oakland, and on another occasion he outlawed any negative interaction between sects of the Christian church. Norton’s power was derived from his ability to communicate with the broader world on the pages of San Francisco’s newspapers, and it seemed the newspapers were happy to publish these announcements as they drew in more readers.
Newspapers gave Norton his notoriety, and enabled him to live the life he did. At the moment George Fitch, the editor of the San Francisco Bulletin, decided to publish Norton’s initial proclamation, he entered into a tacit agreement with the Emperor. The paper would attract readers with these charmingly amusing delusions, and Norton would get a platform for conveying his messages to the world. It worked, and people became enamored with Norton. All of the papers in the city would publish his announcements, with more cutthroat outfits even creating proclamations of their own and printing them in the Emperor’s name when it had been too long between his public fantasies. The city, and to an extent the country, enjoyed the humor of this eccentric Californian. It seemed everyone appreciated it as humor, except for him.
Before he was the Emperor, he was a businessman. He had come to San Francisco in 1849 with $40,000 in his pocket (over a million dollars today) which had been his inheritance from this father. He wasn’t there to pan for gold, as many California immigrants at this time were, but instead to profit from this influx of capital through real estate and business ventures. He bought lots and developed them into industrial and office spaces, and within a few years had increased his worth nearly five-fold. He became a member of the Freemasons, lived in fine hotels, and enjoyed a good life in San Francisco.
It all went wrong for Norton when he was caught up in a bad speculation. There was a shortage of rice in San Francisco, and he found a deal he couldn’t turn down when he was offered the chance to buy a ship full of rice sitting in the harbor. If he had the only rice in the city he could charge a huge premium and earn a hefty profit. He agreed to the deal and placed a down payment on the goods, but on the very next day another ship arrived in San Francisco full of rice. The price for the commodity collapsed and Norton tried to get out of the deal, but was unsuccessful. It grew into a long legal battle, which the ship owners eventually won. Through paying legal fees, and paying for the bad rice, Norton was ruined. By 1856 he had declared bankruptcy. Over the next few years it seems he tried to go back to work in business, but all signs indicate he was unsuccessful.
The next time Norton appeared in the public record was in 1859 when he issued his proclamation. It has been speculated that Norton sought the imperial throne as a way to correct the ills he saw in a legal system that could render him penniless. Regardless of why he chose to name himself Emperor, it is clear that his bankruptcy and subsequent years of failure had changed the once prosperous businessman. He had lost everything, including his grasp on reality.
While there is no definitive proof, it is almost certain that Norton truly believed himself to be not only the actual ruler of the United States, but also of a secret royal lineage. The best glimpse we have into Norton’s unadulterated state of mind comes from a chance encounter he had with a man he hadn’t seen since before he ever came to San Francisco. Nathan Peiser, who had lived with Norton and his parents for a time in South Africa, where Norton grew up, happened to arrive at Norton’s hotel looking for lodging. The two men recognized each other straight away and began catching up as old friends do. The conversation turned and Norton, after some prompting from Peiser and in a delicate whisper, revealed that he was descended from French royals who had fled following the revolution, and that his true parents had hidden him with his surrogate family, the one Peiser knew, to protect him from attack and intrigue. Peiser told him he thought he was crazy, to which Norton replied: “and so do a good many others.”
We can be certain that Norton lived in abject poverty and survived on the donations of others. He slept in the same fifty-cent per night hotel for nearly 17 years, which he paid for with change given to him by people on the street. He considered these donations to be tax collections and kept a record of each one in a notebook he carried. His mornings were regularly spent reading newspapers in hotel lobbies - it cannot be said that he was unintelligent or unaware of what was going on in his city and country. He would often retire to park benches for the afternoon, striking up jovial conversation with friends or passersby. At night he could be found at lectures or plays. He became a regular presence in San Francisco, and his legend continued to develop.
As his notability grew, so did the opportunities to exploit his celebrity. Restauranteurs and business owners began placing signs in their windows claiming their establishment had been approved by the Emperor, or that his royal majesty was a regular customer. And in return for using his name and participating in the jest, these places would give Norton a free meal once in a while and maybe even some clothes. The President of the Central Pacific Railroad, with hopes of softening his greedy reputation, publicly granted the Emperor a lifetime free pass to the rail system. He was once arrested by an overzealous police officer with the charge of lunacy, but when the newspapers railed against the police for arresting the Emperor of the United States, he was released with an apology from the Chief of Police. Norton issued an official pardon to the officer who arrested him.
The Emperor trod a fine line between outright madness and charming eccentricity. The larger situation was exemplified by his interaction with a census taker in 1870. In his encyclopedia entry on Norton, Peter Moylan describes the situation:
“The official United States Census taker in 1870 recorded the presence of Norton. In the column marked occupation was the entry: ‘emperor.’ In the column that explained why Norton was not eligible to vote, the census taker chose the option of ‘insane.’”
It seems it was easier for this census taker, and for the people of San Francisco, to treat Norton as a curiosity and not challenge his deluded view of the world. But when it came time to face facts, they all knew he was crazy. He was tolerated, and even backhandedly celebrated, but he was never in on the joke. Even today, many of the histories of the Emperor discuss his larger-than-life persona and his bizarre proclamations, but don’t touch on his deeply troubled past and his penurious lifestyle. It is one thing to ignore or politely nod at the addled man on the sidewalk claiming the end of the world is nigh, but to encourage him for your own amusement is a step further. The Emperor received constant praise, which only served to feed his fantasies and deepen his distance from the real world.
Norton died on January 8, 1880, after collapsing on a street corner. The next day the San Francisco Chronicle announced “Le Roi Est Mort” (The King is dead) and devoted full pages to remembering the indelible figure. Newspapers throughout the west coast had page-long tributes to Norton and his death was reported nationwide. The New York Times, unaccustomed to Norton’s typical lofty treatment by the papers, reported the event in an article titled “Death of an Eccentric Californian.” They stated “His dementia was of a mild and harmless type…” and that he was “tolerated because he was a public character of whose antecedents almost nothing was known, and whose harmless delusion it pleased the popular whim to tolerate and encourage.” From an outsider’s perspective, and through the cold lens of history, the story of Norton was always tinged with tragedy, but at the very least we can surmise from the accounts of his life that he enjoyed his time as Emperor, whether anyone believed him or not.
