{"id":34937,"date":"2025-04-20T06:46:12","date_gmt":"2025-04-20T06:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/34937\/"},"modified":"2025-04-20T06:46:12","modified_gmt":"2025-04-20T06:46:12","slug":"in-1859-a-south-african-declared-himself-emperor-of-the-united-states-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/34937\/","title":{"rendered":"In 1859, a South African declared himself emperor of the United States | History"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the morning of September 17, 1859, a \u201cwell-dressed and serious-looking man\u201d walked into the offices of The San Francisco Evening Bulletin and \u2013 without explanation \u2013 handed over a document that he wished to see published. Intrigued, the paper\u2019s editors carried a proclamation in that evening\u2019s edition on page 3:<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the peremptory request and desire of a large majority of the citizens of these United States, I, Joshua Norton, formerly of\u00a0Algoa Bay, Cape of Good Hope, and now for the last 9 years and 10 months past of San Francisco, California, declare and proclaim myself Emperor of these United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

The document then asked representatives from around the country to meet in San Francisco\u2019s Musical Hall \u201cto make such alterations in the existing laws of the Union as may ameliorate the evils under which the country is laboring\u201d. It was signed, \u201cNORTON I, Emperor of the United States\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"EmperorThe proclamation of \u2018Emperor Norton\u2019 as seen in The San Francisco Evening Bulletin on September 17, 1859 [Courtesy of the San Francisco Public Library]<\/p>\n

Norton was referring to the heightened political tension surrounding slavery. The Southern states largely depended on enslaved people for their economy, but the North opposed it. When the anti-slavery Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860, Southern states began pulling out of the union \u2013 ultimately resulting in the Civil War.<\/p>\n

The musical hall burned down just nine days before the meeting was due to take place, and although Norton rescheduled it at a different venue, apparently no one showed up.<\/p>\n

As Tesla billionaire Elon Musk continues to influence the trajectory of the United States, it seems a good time to remember another South African who also tried to shape the national conversation, albeit not as successfully.<\/p>\n

Musk, Trump\u2019s appointed leader of the US government\u2019s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has cancelled $1bn worth of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion contracts, drastically reduced USAID\u2019s funding of charitable programmes around the world, and tried to reduce the federal government workforce by two million people.<\/p>\n

He has divided opinion, with some expressing their ire by setting Tesla cars and showrooms alight, while others appreciate him bringing his children into the Oval Office and\u00a0brandishing a chainsaw on stage during Trump\u2019s presidential campaign.<\/p>\n

Norton didn\u2019t have this kind of access to power, and he didn\u2019t inspire a public backlash. But he was a cult figure, says John Lumea, founder of the Emperor Norton Trust, a nonprofit which works to promote Norton\u2019s legacy through research and advocacy, and the leading contemporary scholar of Norton\u2019s life. What\u2019s more, \u201che was way ahead of his time on human rights issues\u201d.<\/p>\n

As Jane Ganahl, co-founder of the San Francisco literary festival Litquake, wrote in a 2018 endorsement of a proposal to rename part of the Bay Bridge in his honour:\u00a0\u201cEmperor Norton could have been a time traveller. A 19th-century man with 21st-century sensibilities, Joshua Norton fought for the rights of immigrants, women and those who suffered under religious persecution.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"EmperorA photograph of Emperor Norton taken in 1869 in San Francisco [Courtesy of the Collection of the Bancroft Library]<\/p>\n

The Emperor \u2013 also self-styled as \u201cProtector of Mexico\u201d as he believed, rightly it turns out, that Mexico was vulnerable to the ambitions of Napoleon III of France \u2013 \u201creigned\u201d for just over 20 years. Wearing a smart blue uniform with impressive brass epaulettes, he roamed the streets of San Francisco on foot, inspecting sidewalks, extracting \u201ctaxes\u201d from his subjects, and writing imperial proclamations on a wide range of subjects for whichever newspaper would have them.<\/p>\n

As far as taxes were concerned, these began as donations from friends and former business associates. From 1870 onwards, when many of his former benefactors had either died or moved away, he began selling promissory notes. Couched as investments in his \u201cimperial government\u201d, these were essentially also donations.<\/p>\n

Many people \u2013 both old friends of Norton\u2019s and those who saw him as a sympathetic character \u2013 went along with it: some banks even issued bank notes in his name. On one level, Norton was little more than a neighbourhood eccentric who had no real influence on politics. But he was an eccentric who is still remembered in books, films, podcasts and social clubs.<\/p>\n

\"EmperorA banknote issued in the name of Emperor Norton in July 1875 [Cuddy and Hughes]<\/p>\n

\u201cClearly, there was some level of psychological dislocation,\u201d says Lumea, who estimates that Norton published at least 400 proclamations on diverse subjects ranging from the rights of immigrants to his annoyance at not being issued with skates at an ice rink. \u201cBut, despite the bluster of some of his proclamations, he was also a very kind person.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Emperor was still a popular figure when, on January 8, 1880, he collapsed on the corner of California and Dupont Streets and died at the age of 61, bringing an end to his 21-year reign. The San Francisco Call reported: \u201cOn the reeking pavement, in the darkness of a moonless night, under the dripping rain \u2026 Norton I, by the grace of God, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, departed this life.\u201d<\/p>\n

After his death, it became clear that the emperor was essentially a pauper \u2013 his small room at the Eureka boarding house contained a variety of walking sticks and hats, a few coins from America and beyond, and a sheath of fake telegrams (thought to have been sent as pranks by local people) purportedly from world leaders \u2013 so the members of the Pacific Club, an exclusive businessmen\u2019s association, banded together to give him a fitting sendoff.<\/p>\n

A reported 10,000 people from all walks of life came to pay their respects by viewing the Emperor \u201cin state\u201d in the city morgue. His body was paraded through the streets in a handsome rosewood casket as people of \u201call classes from capitalists to the pauper, the clergyman to the pickpocket, well-dressed ladies and those whose garb and bearing hinted of the social outcast\u201d, as The San Francisco Chronicle reported, watched on.<\/p>\n

\"EmperorA photograph of Emperor Norton dated circa 1875 [Bradley & Rulofson\/Courtesy of the Collection of the Oakland Museum of California]
\nHumble beginnings<\/p>\n

There is no birth record for Norton, but Jewish circumcision records unearthed in the United Kingdom suggest he was born in Deptford, southeast London, in February 1818. When he was just two years old, his parents emigrated to South Africa as part of a group of Britons known as the 1820 Settlers, brought by Britain to the Cape Colony to strengthen the frontier with the Xhosa people. The British had seized their cattle and land, angering them and sparking nine frontier wars between 1779 and 1879, five of which occurred before 1820. Norton\u2019s father was a farmer and merchant of moderate means, but he still grew up with the political privileges enjoyed by white South Africans under British rule.<\/p>\n

By the time he left South Africa at 27 in 1845, Norton had tried his hand at a few business ventures, none of which were particularly successful. Not much is known about his whereabouts or what he got up to \u2013 he appears to have visited Liverpool, Boston and Rio de Janeiro \u2013 until he arrived in San Francisco in late 1849, at the height of the California Gold Rush.<\/p>\n

\u201cOut West\u201d his fortunes changed, and through a combination of commodities trading and real estate speculation, he became one of the wealthier members of the boom town\u2019s emerging merchant class. \u201cHe belonged to all the right clubs and lived in the fanciest hotel in town,\u201d says Lumea.<\/p>\n

\"EmperorEmperor Norton in 1859 or 1860 [Courtesy of the Bancroft Library]<\/p>\n

But his life of privilege and comfort was short-lived. In 1852, eager to capitalise on rice prices rising ninefold due to a famine in China, Norton put down a deposit for a $25,000 shipload of Peruvian rice. What seemed like a licence to print money soon turned out otherwise, when, days later, San Francisco was inundated with shipments of Peruvian rice \u2013 all of superior quality to Norton\u2019s. Believing that he\u2019d been misled by a middleman who\u2019d exaggerated the quality of the rice, he refused to pay the balance and was duly sued for breach of contract.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems to me that if he\u2019d just let it go he might have survived as a businessman,\u201d says Lumea. \u201cIt was his insistence on seeing justice done that resulted in his financial ruin.\u201d When the Supreme Court finally ruled against him in 1854 and ordered him to pay his creditors $20,000 the following year ($730,000 in today\u2019s money), all of his creditors came calling \u2013 it is thought he had interests in at least a dozen properties \u2013 and many of his friends abandoned him. By 1856, he was forced to declare bankruptcy.<\/p>\n

For a while, Norton appears to have plunged into some sort of reclusive depression, but \u2013 with the country heading fast towards civil war \u2013 he soon began to concern himself with the issues of the day. In particular, he disagreed strongly with the Confederacy and, especially, its support of slavery. His solution to the coming clash was \u201can absolute monarchy, under the supervision and authority of an Independent Emperor and Supreme Council\u201d, he stated in a proclamation.<\/p>\n

\u201cNorton felt that, with so many competing state, regional and party interests in the United States, the constitutional republic and representative democracy institutionalised in the US Constitution was doomed to fail,\u201d says Lumea. \u201cHe was looking for a way the country could bring order out of chaos \u2013 to rescue victory from the jaws of defeat, as it were \u2013 and thought that monarchy offered the most efficient mechanism for doing that.\u201d But, of course, Norton knew his proclamation would not be obeyed.<\/p>\n

In 1858, he announced a run for Congress as an independent candidate (his name never made it onto the ballot) and in July 1859, a few months before declaring himself emperor, he published a (very brief) manifesto which lamented the \u201cdissentions \u2026 between the North and South\u201d and exhorted the citizens of the Union to \u201cinaugurate a new state of things\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"EmperorAn Emperor Norton banknote, November 1879 [Charles A Murdock\/Courtesy of the Collection of the California Historical Society]
\nA friend of immigrants<\/p>\n

While some of Norton\u2019s proclamations were frivolous \u2013 he once issued one against the superintendent of a skating rink, threatening him with arrest for \u201chaving refused us the use of skates\u201d \u2013 Lumea notes that many others were concerned with basic human rights. For example, Norton demanded that African Americans be allowed to ride on public streetcars and study at public schools, and he ordered that those who had wronged Indigenous American \u201ctribes\u201d be publicly punished in front of an assembly of \u201cIndian chiefs\u201d. He also argued for the separation between Church and state and supported women\u2019s right to vote.<\/p>\n

But it was his championing of the rights of Chinese immigrants that was most vehement and prolonged. Lumea has unearthed at least 17 proclamations that deal with the rights of Chinese people. On February 24, 1868, he ordered \u201cthe evidence of Chinese to be taken the same as any other foreign nation, in all our Courts of law and justice\u201d. At the time, there was widespread public backlash against Chinese workers who were felt to be driving wages down. Many trade unionists, politicians and newspapers spoke out against the so-called \u201cyellow peril\u201d and in 1882 the Chinese Exclusion Act put an initial 10-year ban on Chinese immigration. The law was strengthened in the following decades, and the ban was only lifted in 1943.<\/p>\n

\"EmperorOne of Emperor Norton\u2019s proclamations on the rights of Chinese people, published in The San Francisco Daily Examiner on February 24, 1868 [Courtesy of the San Francisco Public Library]<\/p>\n

In October 1871, Norton expressed his outrage at a race riot in neighbouring Los Angeles in which 15 Chinese men were lynched by a white mob and \u201ccommanded the prompt and immediate arrests of all persons implicated in the said wrong\u201d. Of course, he had no actual control over the authorities.<\/p>\n

A few months later, disgruntled by the city\u2019s inadequate response to the riots, he proclaimed that \u201cthe authorities of Los Angeles are held responsible for the outrages perpetrated on the Chinese in that city recently if every person implicated is not properly punished\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"EmperorEmperor Norton on a street in Chinatown, San Francisco [Courtesy of Wolfgang Sell of the National Stereoscopic Association]
\nBridges in the sky<\/p>\n

One thing Musk has in common with the Emperor is his knack for reimagining the world we live in. As Musk has said, \u201cI think it would be great to be born on Earth and die on Mars. Just hopefully not at the point of impact.\u201d<\/p>\n

Musk\u2019s ambitions to colonise Mars might seem outlandish, but then so did Emperor Norton\u2019s three 1872 proclamations ordering the construction of a bridge between San Francisco and Oakland across the bay. \u201cEmperor Norton had his finger on the pulse of public policy,\u201d explains Lumea. \u201cBuilding a bridge spanning San Francisco Bay was not his idea. But the Emperor pushed for and popularised the idea \u2013 and he is the one most closely associated with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

First, some context. In 1871, the Central Pacific Railroad Company sought a $3m investment for the construction of a bridge spanning San Francisco Bay at its narrowest point. The idea never got off the ground as it was widely felt that building a bridge 30 miles south of the city would be of little commercial benefit.<\/p>\n

While the debate was ongoing, however, Emperor Norton latched on to a much better idea. On January 6, 1872, he issued a proclamation \u201cprohibiting\u201d the railroad\u2019s \u201cscheme being carried into effect\u201d and ordering instead that \u201cthe bridge be built from Oakland Point to Telegraph Hill, via Goat Island [now called Yerba Buena Island]\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"EmperorA sketch of the proposed San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as seen in Overland Monthly in April 1913<\/p>\n

In the months that followed, he fleshed out plans in two further proclamations. He specified that the bridge should be \u201ca suspension bridge\u201d and he warned that it should be built \u201cwithout injury to the navigable waters of the Bay of San Francisco\u201d. He even ordered \u201cthe cities of Oakland and San Francisco to make an appropriation [provide the funds] for paying the expense of a survey to determine the practicability of a tunnel under water\u201d.<\/p>\n

A few months later, when no response had come from the cities\u2019 authorities, in typical Norton style, he commanded \u201cthe arrest, by the army, of both the Boards of City Fathers, if they persist in neglecting our decrees\u201d.<\/p>\n

While the Emperor didn\u2019t live to see his bridge built, he might have chuckled to himself had he witnessed the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge opening in 1936: not only did the Bay Bridge follow his route exactly, but it was also a suspension bridge.<\/p>\n

In 1974, 102 years after Norton first floated the idea, his posthumous \u201cI told you sos\u201d would have been even louder with the opening of the Transbay Tube \u2013 an underwater rail tunnel connecting San Francisco and Oakland.<\/p>\n

\"EmperorA perspective view of San Francisco Bay between San Francisco and Oakland showing five of the proposed bridges, in 1926 [Courtesy of Erica Fischer]
\n\"EmperorA close-up photograph taken of Yerba Buena Island to document the progress of the construction of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in 1935 [US Navy photograph]
\nThe man and the myths<\/p>\n

Norton became a prominent fixture of the San Francisco scenery. Freemasons quietly paid his rent and shopkeepers accepted his bank notes. Patrons of local saloons would stand him the price of a drink so he could \u201ctake a free pass at the free-lunch table\u201d which was open to anyone who bought a drink, says Lumea. At political events and lectures, the Emperor would be expected to arrive to say his piece. \u201cEven those who thought the Emperor absurd seemed to enjoy his presence,\u201d says Lumea.<\/p>\n

Part of the Emperor\u2019s appeal may have had to do with his charisma and personality. But there was something more to it, suggested Oscar Penn Fitzgerald (1829\u20131911), a Methodist minister who counted Norton as an occasional parishioner. Fitzgerald felt that it had to do with Norton\u2019s response to financial and mental ruin: \u201cIt was a curious idiosyncrasy that led this man, when fortune and reason were swept away at a stroke, to fall back upon this imaginary imperialism. The nature that could thus, when the real fabric of life was wrecked, construct such another by the exercise of a disordered imagination, must have been originally of a gentle and magnanimous type.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"EmperorEmperor Norton in 1871 or 1872 [Courtesy of the Collection of the California Historical Society]<\/p>\n

With a cult figure like Norton, there will always be some blurring between fact and fiction. Mark Twain, who also lived in San Francisco during the emperor\u2019s reign, modelled the character of the King in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn on him, and Robert Louis Stevenson also mentioned Norton in his novel, The Wrecker.<\/p>\n

Over the years there have been a few TV adaptations of his life, a couple of written biographies by Allen Stanley Lane and William Drury, and at least three organisations \u2013 the Ancient and Honorable Order of E Clampus Vitus (a historical drinking club), the Imperial Council of San Francisco (which elects an emperor and empress each year) and the satirical religion of Discordianism \u2013 have adopted the Emperor as their patron saint.<\/p>\n

As Joel Gazis-Sax wrote in his 1997 essay, The Madness of Joshua Norton: \u201cMost who remember and love the Emperor post-mortemly, love a myth.\u201d<\/p>\n

To this end, Lumea has spent the last 12 years trying to separate the man from the myth, and the digitisation of many historical newspapers has helped considerably in this regard.<\/p>\n

\"EmperorStill celebrated today: \u2018Emperor Norton\u2019 makes an appearance at a parade in San Francisco on June 24, 2018 [Shutterstock]<\/p>\n

Some of Norton\u2019s most famous \u201cproclamations\u201d \u2013 the one in which he banned people from referring to his adoptive home as \u201cFrisco\u201d (a nickname for the city which may be a play on the word \u201cfrisk\u201d as a word for \u201cdance\u201d and which was seen in print from 1950) for example \u2013 are most likely fake. Some may have been created by newspaper proprietors seeking readers or pushing their political agendas.<\/p>\n

In 1869, The Oakland Daily News, for example, mocked San Francisco by publishing an obviously fake proclamation in which the Emperor called for an impossible bridge. The Emperor frequently issued counter-proclamations taking offence at such fake proclamations \u2013 and he took steps to oppose misinformation, such as when he appointed The Pacific Appeal newspaper, founded by African American civil rights and antislavery activist Philip Alexander Bell, as his new \u201cimperial organ\u201d, writing in December 1870 that \u201cwe\u2026do hereby appoint the Pacific Appeal our said organ, conditionally, that they are not traitors, and stand true to our colors\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"EmperorJoseph Amster, centre, dressed as Emperor Norton, sings \u2018I Left My Heart in San Francisco\u2019 at the end of a parade to remember the great San Francisco 1906 earthquake and fire\u2019s 110th anniversary on Friday, April 15, 2016, in San Francisco [Eric Risberg\/AP]<\/p>\n

Emperor Norton was a visionary, says Ganahl.\u00a0<\/strong>He was also one of the first media-made celebrities. \u201cA century and a half before we ever heard the name Kardashian, the Emp\u2019s antics made for excellent copy, and he was hounded by the dozens of newspapers that called San Francisco home after the gold rush. What they didn\u2019t directly observe, they made up in a very real \u2018phase one\u2019 of Fake News.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy the time he died at the height of his \u2018reign\u2019, he was putting San Francisco on the map as a place that welcomed nuts and dreamers, anyone who coloured outside the lines. And so it remains today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Emperor Norton was only ever a local hero, but 150 years after his death, he remains known and loved throughout the Bay Area, says Lumea. \u201cHe is seen as a harbinger of San Francisco values, identifying with those on the margins, and fighting for the little guy. The fact that he was doing that from outside of power makes it all the more poignant.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On the morning of September 17, 1859, a \u201cwell-dressed and serious-looking man\u201d walked into the offices of The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34938,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[20087,32,295,126,2348,15894,49,978,286,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-34937","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-civil-rights","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-elon-musk","11":"tag-features","12":"tag-history","13":"tag-racism","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-us","16":"tag-us-canada","17":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114368950123406141","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}