Emperor Norton Abolished the Democratic and Republican Parties — Twice
Discovery of a Second Proclamation Taking Aim at the Two-Party System
IN AUGUST 1858 — a full year before declaring himself Emperor of the United States in September 1859 — Joshua Norton took out a 3-day advertisement in the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin announcing himself as an “INDEPENDENT CANDIDATE” for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives:
Joshua Norton’s ad announcing candidacy for U.S. Congress, San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, 21 August 1858, p. 2. Source: GenealogyBank (To learn more, see our March 2022 article here.)
Seventeen years later, on 13 July 1875, a public “No Party” forum was held in San Francisco at the Mercantile Library, on Bush Street, between Montgomery and Sansome. Emperor Norton was on hand, and he offered a brief speech, which was noted by at least three newspapers: the Bulletin, the Daily Alta, and the Los Angeles Evening Express.
The Bulletin (see below) observed: “The Emperor was particularly impressive in his declaration and demonstrative argument that the Americans are in rank disrepute.”
Given Emperor Norton’s longstanding preference for politics practiced “independent” of party — given the fact, more broadly, that so much of the Emperor’s project was about exposing and calling out vulnerabilities, weaknesses, and corruptions in the system (including political parties) — and, given the Emperor’s penchant for making bold statements that strike at the root of the problem…
It’s not really surprising that, on 12 August 1869, Emperor Norton issued the following Proclamation abolishing the Democratic and Republican parties. The Proclamation was published, apparently a day or two later, in the recently — but only briefly ― resurrected San Francisco (Daily) Herald newspaper. (The Herald had been one of the City’s leading papers from its launch in 1850 until it opposed the Second Committee of Vigilance 1856 — causing the paper to lose so much support that it hobbled along in succeeding years before being forced to close in 1862.)
Proclamation of Emperor Norton abolishing the Democratic and Republican parties (“allaying the dissensions of party strife”), San Francisco Herald, 13 August 1869. Collection of the California State Library. Source: Allen Stanley Lane, Emperor Norton: The Mad Monarch of America (The Caxton Printers, 1939), leaf between pages 168 and 169.
:: :: ::
EMPEROR NORTON’S particular calls to abolish basic institutions like Congress or the presidency or major political parties — or the United States itself — did not signal the beginnings of sustained campaigns to accomplish these things.
Rather, these Proclamations were cultural markers, with the Emperor functioning as a kind of one-man Greek chorus — albeit a chorus that, Cassandra-like, was able to see the truth more clearly than others, without his audience being unable to see or understand what he was saying — with the result that, as often as not, they simply dismissed him as crazy.
But, every now and again, Emperor Norton found an opportunity to return to his theme — as if to say: “You may be wondering if I think the situation is as it was before — and if my prescription is the same. My answer, for the record, is Yes.”
It often is the first instances of these hard-charging Proclamations that draw the attention. So, we hear a lot about the Proclamation issued and published in the Bulletin on 12 October 1859, in which the Emperor wrote: “We do hereby abolish Congress, and it is therefore abolished.”
But, as we saw last week: In a Proclamation apparently issued 20 years later, on 24 December 1879 — but published posthumously on 10 January 1880 — Emperor Norton wrote: “The Congress of the United States must pass an Act declaring the Decree of Norton I. a law of the United States, or it is hereby abolished.
:: :: ::
SO, IT WAS exciting this week to uncover a previously unreported Proclamation showing that Emperor Norton also returned to the theme of abolishing the major political parties.
This “second” Proclamation — published seven years after the earlier one — appeared in the Oakland Daily News on 5 September 1876:
Proclamation of Emperor Norton dissolving the Republican and Democratic parties (to improve the economic climate), Oakland Daily News, 5 September 1876, p. 3. Source: Genealogy Bank
In the two Proclamations, the rationales for abolishing the Democratic and Republican parties are different: “allaying the dissensions of party strife” in 1869; improving the economic climate in 1876.
But, with Joshua Norton’s 1858 announcement of his intention to run as an independent candidate, what the 1876 Proclamation ― coming on the heels of his 1875 “No Party” speech — helps to show is that Emperor Norton’s basic antipathy to the major parties and to the party system was a constant for nearly 20 years.
There’s every reason to suppose that the Emperor maintained this posture until the end of his life.
:: :: ::
For an archive of all of the Trust’s blog posts and a complete listing of search tags, please click here.
Search our blog...