A bankrupt San Francisco merchant declared himself Emperor of the United States in 1859 — and the city played along for 21 years, saluting him in the streets.
Joshua Norton arrived in San Francisco in 1849 and made a small fortune in real estate and commodities — until he tried to corner the rice market in 1852 and went spectacularly bankrupt. By 1856 he had lost everything. Three years later, he found a different solution.
On September 17, 1859, Norton walked into the offices of the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin and handed them a proclamation: 'I declare and proclaim myself Emperor of these United States.' The newspaper printed it for laughs. San Francisco, apparently, decided to play along — and never stopped.
The city embraced Norton completely. Restaurants fed him for free. The Army donated him an elaborate blue uniform with gold-plated epaulettes; he added a beaver hat with peacock feathers. He rode ferries and trains without paying. When a police officer tried to have him committed for mental treatment in 1867, there was a public uproar — the police chief released him with a formal written apology.
Norton issued an astonishing range of imperial decrees: he abolished Congress (1859), dissolved both the Democratic and Republican parties (1869), ordered the construction of a bridge connecting San Francisco to Oakland (decades before the Bay Bridge was built), and demanded the Catholic and Protestant churches crown him Emperor.
He printed his own currency in denominations of 50 cents to $10, which some San Francisco restaurants genuinely accepted. The 1870 U.S. Census recorded his occupation as simply 'Emperor' — with a note that he was 'insane.' Norton's surviving scrip notes now sell for over $10,000 at auction.
Norton collapsed and died on a San Francisco street corner on January 8, 1880, while on his way to a debate. Police found him utterly destitute — five dollars in change, some defunct gold mine stock, and letters he'd been writing to Queen Victoria. He had been, essentially, poor the entire time.
His funeral drew an estimated 10,000 people from every level of San Francisco society — capitalists, clergy, pickpockets, and society ladies. Mark Twain based a character on him; Robert Louis Stevenson wrote about him; Neil Gaiman put him in a comic series. He is still the subject of annual pilgrimages to his grave.