Over the history of the United States of America there have been 46 presidents. You can probably name at least a few of them. One person you probably couldn't name is Norton I, the United States' only emperor. You might wonder how such a thing happened, sit back and relax as I tell you the bizarre tale of Emperor Norton.
Our story starts in Deptford, England sometime in the 1810s. This is the place and time that Joshua Abraham Norton was born. Despite being born in England, Norton spent most of his youth in South Africa due to a colonization program the British government was doing. Some time in late 1845 Norton left South Africa and moved to Boston. Then in 1849 he moved to San Francisco. What Norton did those 3 and half years is not known. For the first couple years living in San Francisco, Norton was one of the city's wealthiest citizens due to his success as a trader and real estate speculator. Of course this period of wealth could not last forever. For some quick context, at this time China was dealing with a bad famine. Because of this, the country banned the export of rice. This naturally made rice prices go up. Now Norton thought he was being smart by buying a shipment of rice from Peru for 12 cents a pound, hoping to corner the market and make lots of money. Unfortunately for Norton he was not the only person who had this idea and exports of rice started flooding out of Peru. This made the price of rice go down dramatically to 4 cents a pound. This meant that Norton was out a large amount of money. After this and a failed legal battle with his supplier Norton was completely penniless and completely disappeared from public life. For many years this was the end of Joshua Abraham Norton. He was destined to be forgotten from the pages of history. This was until September of 1859 when Norton wrote to the San Francisco Bulletin and demanded they publish the following proclamation in their paper: “At the peremptory request of a majority of citizens of these United States, I, Joshua Norton formerly of Alga Bay, Cape of Good Hope and for the past nine years of San Francisco, California declare and proclaim myself Emperor of these United States.” Now, in most cases you would expect that a newspaper wouldn’t take the ramblings of a washed up commodities trader very seriously, but for whatever reason the paper decided to go along with it and published Norton’s declaration in full. The people of San Francisco probably laughed at the proclamation and went about their day, not knowing that Norton’s rise had begun. Joshua Norton started walking around San Francisco in a fancy suit that looked like a combination of the Union and Confederate Civil War uniforms. He also wore a large hat with a peacock feather on it and carried a sword around at all times. It wasn't just an outfit, Norton actually went around inspecting parts of the city and even made some decrees. Some of these decrees included abolishing Congress, demanding the Catholic and Protestant churches acknowledge his emperorship, abolishing the political parties and a 25$ fine for anyone who called San Francisco ‘Frisco’. A few of Norton’s decrees were actually pretty forward thinking, for example one of his decrees was that a suspension bridge be built between San Francisco and Oakland, this ended up happening in 1937 when the Golden Gate Bridge was built. Another one of Norton’s decrees was that a League of Nations be formed between all the Earth's countries. This also happened in 1920 after the first World War. Another weird thing Norton did was send letters to the Queen of England saying they should marry to strengthen ties between the US and United Kingdom. This naturally didn’t happen. Despite what you might think Norton was actually not treated as a complete joke by the citizens of San Francisco, people paid for his meals, accepted his currency (creatively called Norton Bucks), and had shops make dolls of him. In 1867 a police officer named Armand (or Armond, sources differ) Barbier arrested Norton for lunacy. When local papers heard this they went berserk, writing scathing pieces about the police department in the paper. Outraged citizens poured into the courthouse to protest, leading the police chief to release Norton and issue a public apology. After this police officers saluted Norton when he walked by. Our story comes to an end in 1880 when Norton I collapsed on a street corner and died. 30,000 people showed up for his funeral. That’s the end of the story. I thought this would be a good story to tell and I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for reading! - Greg Works Cited
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