Strange but True · Published October 5, 2026

September 17, 1859: Joshua Norton Declares Himself Emperor of the United States

By TodayInHistory.wtf Editorial Desk. Reviewed by TodayInHistory.wtf Editorial Standards.

On September 17, 1859, a man walked into the office of the San Francisco Evening Bulletin, handed over a sheet of paper and left. The Bulletin printed it in that day's edition. In it, Joshua Norton declared himself Emperor of the United States.

Nobody had asked him to. Yet for the next twenty years, San Francisco more or less played along, and Norton I is still celebrated in the city today.

Who Joshua Norton was

Very little about his early life is known for certain. KQED, San Francisco's public broadcaster, summarizes what researchers do know: "Emperor Norton was born Joshua Abraham Norton in 1818 to Jewish parents in present-day London. At age 2, he moved with his parents to South Africa, where his dad set up a successful ship supplies business."

He arrived in California with the Gold Rush. "The following year, Norton left South Africa, and after a short stop in South America, landed in San Francisco in late 1849," KQED reports. At first, things went well. "He established himself as a successful businessman selling commodities like rice and flour," and invested in real estate.

The rice gamble

Then came the deal that wiped him out. According to KQED, "With a rice famine underway in China, Norton was presented with a chance to corner the rice market by buying up a shipload of Peruvian rice. Expecting rice prices to soar, Norton went in with a couple of business partners in 1852 and staked $25,000 on the venture."

It went bad almost immediately. John Lumea, president of the Emperor's Bridge Campaign, told KQED: "Within a [few] days, ship after ship after ship of rice comes in, and so the bottom falls out of the market."

"The deal, and the subsequent years of legal wrangling, ruined Norton," KQED says. "By the time Norton was 38, in 1856, he was bankrupt for the second time." The Museum of the City of San Francisco sums it up in one line: Norton "lost his money in an attempt to corner the rice market."

The proclamation

After a few quiet years, Norton turned up again, this time in print. KQED: "He re-emerged on Sept. 17, 1859, on the pages on the San Francisco Evening Bulletin newspaper. Earlier in the day, he had walked into the paper's offices and presented the editor with a short notice he asked to have published in that day's edition."

The Bulletin ran it under the heading "Have We an Emperor among us?" A transcription of that page, compiled by the Emperor Norton Project, gives the paper's introduction: "The world is full of queer people. This forenoon, a well-dressed and serious-looking man entered our office and quietly left the following document, which he respectfully requested we would examine and insert in the Bulletin. Promising him to look at it, he politely retired, without saying anything further."

The notice itself, as KQED quotes it, began: "At the peremptory request of a large majority of the citizens of these United States, I, Joshua Norton, formerly of Algoa Bay, Cape of Good Hope, and now for the last nine years and ten months past of San Francisco, California, declare and proclaim myself Emperor of these United States."

He did not stop at a title. Norton ordered the states to send representatives to a meeting. In the transcription's words, he would "order and direct the representatives of the different States of the Union to assemble in the Musical Hall of this city on the 1st day of February next, then and there to make such alterations in the existing laws of the Union as may ameliorate the evils under which the country is laboring."

KQED notes the result: "Unsurprisingly, nobody showed up."

The first decrees

Norton was just getting started. Within weeks the Bulletin printed more. One, dated October 12, 1859, in the Emperor Norton Project transcription, declared: "we do hereby abolish Congress, and it is therefore abolished." Another, dated October 27, 1859, in the same transcription, declared: "We, Norton I., Emperor of the United States of America, do hereby abolish the Supreme Court of this State, and the same is hereby abolished."

Norton wanted everyone to know these really came from him. On December 30, 1859, according to the Emperor Norton Project transcription, the Bulletin ran a card from him: "I, Joshua Norton, formerly of Algoa Bay, Cape of Good Hope, am the author of all the articles that have appeared in the Evening Bulletin under the signature of 'Norton I;' and I alone am responsible for every line therein. Put that in your pipe and smoke it."

That mattered, because fakes were plentiful. The Museum of the City of San Francisco warns that "Many of the 'decrees' attributed to Norton I were fakes; written in jest by newspaper editors at the time for amusement, or for political purposes." KQED reports that because of this, "in 1870, he started publishing his genuine proclamations almost exclusively in an African-American-owned and operated abolitionist weekly, The Pacific Appeal."

Twenty years as emperor

Norton stayed in character for the rest of his life. KQED describes his later uniform as "a blue officer's jacket furnished with large, fringed, golden shoulder epaulets," and says he lived largely on the generosity of others. His lodgings on Commercial Street "cost him only 50 cents a night."

His best-known later decrees called for a bridge across the bay. The Museum of the City of San Francisco records that on March 23, 1872, Norton decreed "that a suspension bridge be built as soon as convenient between Oakland Point and Goat Island, and then on to San Francisco."

The city's fondness for him was genuine. The museum records that in January 1867 an officer arrested Norton, and "Police Chief Patrick Crowley apologized to His Majesty and ordered him released." It also notes that in the 1870 census, Norton "was listed by the Census taker with the occupation of 'emperor'."

His death

Norton died on January 8, 1880. According to the museum, he "dropped dead on California St. at Grant Ave. He was on his way to a lecture at the Academy of Natural Sciences." KQED says he "died of a suspected stroke."

His funeral was huge. In the museum's words: "The funeral cortege was two miles long. 10,000 people turned out for the funeral." KQED gives the same figure: "Ten thousand people came to Norton's funeral."

Why he is remembered

Norton's story is easy to tell as a joke about a madman. KQED notes there are "no sure answers about Norton's mental health," and Lumea offers a kinder reading: "There's a sense in which the persona of the Emperor actually saved him in a way."

What the record shows is a man who lost everything, invented a new role for himself, and was mostly allowed to keep it by a city that seemed to enjoy having him.

What the record supports

Sources