“What happens when a man who loses his entire fortune also loses his sanity and declares himself the absolute ruler of a nation? He would probably be locked up in an asylum.
Yet, when Joshua Norton declared himself the ‘Emperor of the United States,’ an entire city knelt in respectful deference to his madness, accepted the currency he printed as valid tender in their shops, and thirty thousand people wept at his funeral. Here is that tragicomic story where madness turned into a kingdom, and dreams morphed into reality…”
The story of Joshua Norton is a chronological account of a businessman’s dramatic identity shift following a massive financial collapse, and the subsequent official recognition of that shift by an entire city. Arriving in San Francisco from South Africa in 1849, Norton was initially a respected merchant who grew his fortune to $250,000 through real estate investments. However, in 1852, he attempted to capitalize on a rice shortage in China by investing all his capital into a single shipment of rice. When unexpected ships arrived at the port shortly after, the market crashed, signaling his downfall.
By 1858, burdened by court costs and debts, Norton had lost everything and withdrew from society as a bankrupt man.After approximately a year of deep silence, America’s first and only “imperial” era began on September 17, 1859, when Norton walked into the editorial office of the San Francisco Bulletin and hand-delivered a proclamation. Upon the editor’s publication of this text, the public met a man who inspected the streets daily, dressed in an old Civil War uniform with gold-plated epaulets, a peacock-feathered hat, and a cane. Norton did not merely declare himself a monarch; he issued concrete decrees regarding the functioning of the state. For instance, in an 1869 decree, he ordered the construction of a bridge and tunnel connecting San Francisco and Oakland—a demand that would materialize nearly 50 years after his death with the construction of the Bay Bridge.
Norton’s intervention in the economy was solidified through printed documents. He issued 50-cent and one-dollar promissory notes, printed at a local shop, which bore his signature and the inscription “Empire of the United States.” These were accepted as cash by San Francisco merchants. Restaurants reserved their best tables for him, and theaters held special seats at galas; a visit from Norton had become a symbol of prestige for any establishment. Even federal tax collectors did not interfere with his activities. In the 1870 census, officials personally recorded his occupation as “Emperor,” proving that his status was not merely a joke but a social consensus.In his later years, when his uniform became tattered, the San Francisco City Council allocated an official budget to have a new military outfit tailored for the Emperor.
When he suddenly collapsed and died on the street while heading to the California Academy of Sciences on January 8, 1880, no personal assets were found on him. His only wealth in his boarding house room consisted of Victorian-era imitations, a collection of walking sticks, and copies of letters he had written to foreign monarchs. The following day, every shop in the city closed in mourning, and the San Francisco Chronicle ran the headline “Le Roi est Mort” (The King is Dead). The funeral procession, nearly two miles long, brought together 30,000 people—from wealthy merchants to laborers—forming a farewell crowd of a magnitude never granted to any politician on American soil.
