The Chief that Now Commands: The Reign of Emperor Norton I

Joshua Abraham Norton’s circumstances of birth are unclear, but it is generally agreed that he was born in England around 1819 and spent most of his early life in the Cape Colony before immigrating to San Francisco in 1849 on money from his father. In California, he bought a shipment of rice from Peru headed towards San Francisco in hopes of gaining an effective monopoly in rice in the area after China banned rice exports that year. However, it turned out Peruvian merchants were sending several more ships to California, and he lost a large amount of money. Thereafter, he left San Francisco for a time.

Upon returning, Norton issued a grand proclamation, one of the most significant events in American history, on September 17th, 1859. This proclamation, designed to rid the nation of the sectionalism that divided it, read:

At the peremptory request and desire 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 9 years and 10 months past of S. F., Cal., declare and proclaim myself Emperor of these U. S.; and in virtue of the authority thereby in me vested, do hereby order and direct the representatives of the different States of the Union to assemble in Musical Hall, of this city, on the 1st day of Feb. 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, and thereby cause confidence to exist, both at home and abroad, in our stability and integrity.
—NORTON I, Emperor of the United States

News was sent promptly to Washington, D.C. via railway, where the news was met with surprise. Upon being read to the House of Representatives by House Speaker James Lawrence Orr, it was met with some confusion, followed by a resignation to what was necessary; similar reactions were met by the Senate when the resolution was read by President Pro Tempore Benjamin Fitzpatrick. However, there was some feeling, that would grow more popular, that such a leader was necessary to ease sectional tension within the country (which it was suffering from in abundance). In accordance with the proclamation, both houses passed a resolution that most of the federal government’s assets and resources would be moved to San Francisco by February; the Federal archives began to be moved a week later, and military forces shortly behind that.

President James Buchanan and Vice President John Breckinridge reacted in shock, disappointment, and guilt. Buchanan’s memoirs recount that “I [Buchanan] wanted to be as monumental as Washington in the history of this nation, but the proclamation by the Emperor proved to me that I was a failure.” Buchanan and Breckinridge calmly but sullenly took resignation and handed over the power of the country to the newly declared Emperor Norton I of the United States (it is to be noted that unlike most monarchs, Norton chose to use his surname as his regal name; under traditional systems he would be Emperor Joshua I of the House of Norton. He never explained this peculiarity. It is speculated that he did this to make the monarchy more American and less beholden to European tradition).

The next month, the country was shocked when, in Harpers Ferry, Virginia, the radical abolitionist John Brown led a makeshift army of slaves to raid a federal arsenal in an attempt to start a slave rebellion throughout the South. After holding the arsenal for 36 hours, he was killed, along with his men, by forces under the command of Robert E. Lee. The response in Washington was mixed; a few abolitionists in the body supported him while the majority, whether Northern or Southern, called him a traitor and a terrorist. Norton did not approve of Brown’s actions but also did not support his execution. In response, he removed Governor of Virginia Henry A. Wise from his office and replaced him with Breckinridge, the deposed Vice President.

This set off a fiery debate within the halls of Congress on the expansion of slavery, the debate that had defined American politics for several years previously, as well as the powers and role of the new Emperor. In December, Congress reassembled, and the House of Representatives would have to choose the Speaker of the House, something which was likely to delay any concrete action. Reports of Congressmen coming to the session armed in case of a fight eventually reached San Francisco, and the new Emperor of the country was alarmed. Understanding his presence was needed and his power under potential threat, Norton boarded a train on the Overland Trail on the Central Pacific Railway to Washington D.C. to hopefully ameliorate his people’s representatives.

Upon arriving, he addressed a joint session of Congress in his first public appearance to the nation, where a verse of Hail, Columbia was appropriated to be his personal hymn, to be sung at his appearances:

Behold the Chief that now commands,
Once more to serve his country stands!
The rock on which the storm will break,
The rock on which the storm will break!
But armed with virtue, firm and true,
His hopes are fixed on Heaven and you!
When hope was sinking in dismay,
When gloom obscured Columbia’s day,
His steady mind of changed free,
Resolved on death or liberty!

In this address, he decried the “inability to show national unity,” something Southern congressmen decried, noting that the Union was a union of states and was comprised as such, and that Norton did not sufficiently acknowledge that fact. In his speech, Norton called for compromise on the issue of slavery and Western homesteading, in which he supported a possible sale (albeit cheaply) of land in Nebraska territory and in the southwestern territories gained from Mexico.

After he departed, Congress continued to vigorously debate the Emperor’s proposals, some incensed that he had taking a distinctively partisan stance on pressing issues, and others calling him an autocrat. This came to a head when shots were fired in the House of Representatives and a subsequent brawl between Congressmen on the house floor, leaving one Congressman from Massachusetts dead and another from Alabama dying, and subsequently had to be rushed to a hospital where he died of blood loss.

This bloodshed appalled the Emperor, and led him to lose all faith in the current Congress with the exception of a few. Hence, he gave the now-famous (or notorious) “dissolution proclamation,” declaring all current Congressmen in rebellion against his right as the Imperial Sovereign of the United States and completely unfit to legislate for the various states of the country. Congress would be abolished in the meantime; Norton would have to rule as an enlightened despot, an “absolute monarch” of America to help it come to a political situation that did not seem on the brink of civil war.

On December 7th, 1859, forces of the United States Army under the command of General Robert E. Lee marched into the Capitol, where Congress was in session, and personally arrested all of the members of that body, under an order of “punishing treason and incompetency in governance of this great country.” These Congressmen were subsequently sent home and forbidden to run for office again unless this punishment was waived by the Emperor himself. In a speech on the Capitol, the Emperor declared that “the current Governors of all the states will be left to run their states as they will, Free states and slave states both, and the territories in the West, won in the war against Mexico, will continue to be governed by Imperial decree and discretion.”

Thus began an era in American history that would last until 1861 in which the country was truly a loose confederation of states under a revolutionary army. Under Norton’s benevolent rule, the territories of Nebraska, Dakota, and Nevada were brought into the Union, and the foundations were laid for the accession of New Mexico’s accession as well as the delineation of the various Pacific Northwest territories to be admitted as well. However, it can be argued that his lasseiz-faire policy regarding the role of the federal government set the stage for later tensions, as the lack of any ability for Northern and Southern states to confront one another on the question of slavery served as a delay to the pressing issues of slavery.

Already slavery was beginning to show its ugly divisiveness during the admission of the above three states. Nebraska, Dakota, and Nevada all voted to become free states, eschewing the institution of slavery. Southern politicians, such as Alexander Stephens of Georgia, made verbal protestations about what they perceived as these states denying the truth of racial inequality, but the Emperor continued to remain more or less ambivalent about the issue. His official statement, made in a speech in San Francisco, was that “the states are each a component of this Empire, and each component thusly is able to conduct itself in a manner appropriate to it.” This state of affairs continued until December 1861, with Norton ruling as essentially a benevolent dictator. Despite his absolutism, he did not seem to care much about individual state issues and let them run themselves; one man could not govern them all, and he was concerned mostly with national issues.

During this time Norton also assumed the title of ‘Protector of Mexico,’ and incorporated that into the Norton Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, an expansion of the latter doctrine which would “protect Mexico and other nations of this hemisphere from the prying hands of the European nations.” This was clearly in response to the signing of the Treaty of London on October 31st, 1861, wherein France, Britain, and Spain agreed to blockade Mexico to obtain repayment on debts that Mexico had taken out and not repaid.

Norton ordered the United States’ Ambassador in Mexico City, John B. Weller, to inform Mexican President Benito Juarez that, should the French, British, or Spanish invade Mexico, the United States would fight alongside Mexico to defend the sovereignty of a fellow nation in the Western hemisphere. Juarez, a pragmatist, accepted the offer and personally praised Norton and Weller in a dinner held in Mexico City, despite the concerns of others, many conservatives, who felt that the US might have been trying to steal more of the country, much as they did in the Mexican-American War of 1846 to 1848. However, Norton did not have any imperialistic ambitions against Mexico; he felt that they were valuable allies and had done nothing to provoke the US during this time (however, he saw the previous war as another distinct occurrence).

Norton called up the creation of a five hundred thousand-strong army, to be conscripted from all across the Union, to prepare for war. He stationed the Navy at Tampa, Florida, to prepare for a possible invasion of Cuba and the Bahamas. He stationed a large battalion of troops in Rochester, New York, with the intention of launching a land invasion of Canada to take Toronto, and another force in Plattsburg, New York, to take Montreal, should war come. He positioned a force in the Washington Territory in the northwestern part of the country, where he was poised to take British Columbia, the remainder of the Oregon Territory given to the British after the Oregon Treaty, poised specifically at Vancouver Island. Yet another force was in Brownsville, Texas, to march into Mexico to defend the mainland if the three European powers dared invade.

The threat of European intervention was enough to allow the assembly of Congress San Francisco, with new elections held for all. He took time to appoint a cabinet; William Henry Seward was appointed as his Foreign Minister. Seward was a ruthlessly competent diplomat and statesman that was also an adamant opponent of slavery; Southern congressmen were incensed but were placated by the appointment of John Breckinridge as Defense Minister, a nod to his service as a Major in the Third Kentucky Regiment in the Mexican-American War. His generalship was composed of various qualified generals, with General Winfield Scott as the Field Marshal of the Grand Army of the Empire, the new name for the reconstituted army under Norton’s authority. Robert E. Lee was the commander of the forces in Brownsville, meaning that, should war occur, he would be the commander of the forces in Mexico. In Florida, David Farragut and Raphael Semmes were in charge of the naval forces poised to take Cuba and the Bahamas. George Meade and Ambrose Burnside were in charge of the GAE deployments in New York, and Abner Doubleday was the commander of the forces in Washington Territory.

The fleets of the three powers arrived in Veracruz between the 8th and 17th of December of that year. Spain then moved to take the fort of San Juan de Ulua, outside of Veracruz, and subsequently seized the city proper. Emperor Norton, under his title as the Protector of Mexico, ordered General Lee to move into Mexico to aid the Mexicans against the Spanish. Shortly thereafter, Orizaba, Cordoba, and Tehuacan were taken by the interventionists, and Campeche surrendered to the French general Charles de Lorencez. To counter such aggression, Norton ordered Admiral Farragut to invade Cuba, and he subsequently did so after besieging Havana. Admiral Semmes invaded the Bahamas and aimed for Nassau. In Canada, the two-pronged attack into the British-held lands came as only somewhat of a shock; those from Canada and British Columbia anticipated the possibility of war and had prepared themselves.

American forces in this war were backed significantly by the massive expenditure that had gone into production of railways across the continent during the first two years of the Emperor’s reign. American soldiers from all around the Union were deployed in British North America, Cuba, or Mexico rapidly due to the superior infrastructure of the country; this was most prominent in British North America due to the ability to deploy large amounts of forces against such a smaller enemy. By January 4th, Toronto had fallen to the Americans. Two days later, Montreal fell.
In Mexico, as the French advanced towards Mexico City, Spain and Britain realized that the French Emperor Napoleon III had ambitions of not merely retaking his debt, but by taking control of all Mexico as a new part of his empire. However, it was too late to withdraw; Canada was already beginning to fall to the relentless American advance. British, French, and Spanish forces were bogged down in their siege of Puebla by defending American forces working in cooperation with the Mexican army. Havana fell, as did Nassau, and those two territories were solidly in control of the United States.

The fighting in Mexico was considered a slog by all involved, as the forces of the European powers were being matched on the battlefield by experienced American troops, their leadership often augmented by experience in the Mexican-American War, an irony not forgotten many on the Mexican side. Conservatives abhorred the possibility of American troops once more in Mexican soil and thusly many joined with the French, who aimed to install an Austrian prince as Maximilian I, Emperor of Mexico, to serve French imperial interests. Mexican liberals also were not enthusiastic but understood the necessity of accepting American aid.

Many have been surprised at these initial successes, both at historical and contemporary vantage points. However, it must be understood that in fighting the European powers, the US was at an advantage due to the necessity of its enemies to send forces from across the seas, and maintain a supply chain that crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Such allowed the stunning success in Canada, and later the naval battles in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico that were hallmarks of the war in popular culture shortly thereafter. The US was able to prove this point when a joint Mexican-American force, led by Ignacio Zaragoza and Jacob Dolson Cox, invaded the British colony of Belize bordering the Mexican possessions in the Yucatan peninsula, forcing the small British encampment there to surrender after the Battle of Belize, where the port city was taken by the invading army with naval support provided by Admiral Farragut personally.

Vancouver fell in June 1862, and Halifax in July, where Fourth of July celebrations were celebrated on Citadel Hill, a fortification made to prevent an American attack on the city during the War of Independence. Quebec City surrendered later that month, and in August, the French, Spanish, and British conceded surrender in a humiliating defeat. Delegates from the five nations met in Rio de Janeiro, the capital of the Empire of Brazil, to discuss terms of peace. The results were overwhelmingly in favor of the United States and to Mexico: Canada, the Bahamas, and Cuba would be ceded to the US, Belize would go to Mexico, and Mexico would no longer have to pay any debt to those countries. Napoleon III’s desire for a North American empire was quashed, and Queen Victoria lost the largest possession in her own Empire on that continent. Norton’s Empire had doubled in size, and likely in power on the world stage.

Cuba was admitted as a state of the Union in January of 1863, after many Southern slaveowners moved there looking for arable land. Upon its accession, Cuba was a slave state, allowing the ‘peculiar institution’ to continue existing. British North America was substantially harder to deal with; Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland were all admitted in February, but the question of what to do with the Province of Canada was unresolved. Run by a system of government to ensure the dominance of the English-speaking majority after the rebellions of 1837, over the French-speaking minority in Canada East. To remedy this, the solution established by Imperial authorities was the creation of two states, Canada and Quebec, the latter mostly French-speaking, but with English still enjoying a status as a co-official language with practical uses. The northern parts of Oregon Country were admitted as the state of Columbia, and Rupert’s Land was organized as the Keewatin Territory. In April, the Bahamas were admitted as yet another state to the Empire that Norton had forged.

Such was a cause of celebration throughout the country, and ever so temporarily the issue of slavery was swept under the rug to give way to a feeling of national euphoria, the feeling that their nation, founded less than a century before then, was able to take on, and defeat, not one, but three of the greatest empires the world had ever known. Jubilant throngs of joy were felt from Vancouver to Havana, from St. John’s to San Diego. In conjunction with the celebrations in Mexico, it could be said more than half the continent shared in such revelry. The Emperor’s popularity soared for a time, his somewhat undemocratic leanings obscured by the victory over which he had presided. To join in the merrymaking, the Emperor announced his “Tour of Triumph,” a tour around the nation over the next two years to celebrate this monumental victory, with stops in Mexico as well.

First, he left San Francisco to go to Los Angeles, where he partook in Fourth of July celebrations, the first since the victory in the War of the Mexican Defense, as it was called, and the most vibrant since the early days of American independence. From there, after staying some time in New Mexico territory and Texas, he moved south into Mexico and visited American and Mexican garrisons in that country, eating with the soldiers on many occasions. He then visited Veracruz and congratulated the forces there in repelling the invasion, and then to Puebla and then Mexico City to dine with Juarez, where they shared in a grand ceremony as leaders of two allied nations, together in concord and in victory. In a speech to the Mexican Congress, Norton said that “The United States asks that Mexicans and Americans forget past animosities and together see the glory that is this victory against the intrusion of foreigners. Now, a salute to independence and to the soldiers, past and present, that have fought for it!”

Cynics would note that many of those soldiers had previously been fighting Mexico, a war that resulted in the growth of one victor at the expense of the other; Mexican conservatives and American liberals expressed this thought, but not openly, as the revelers would have none of it. Indeed, in the dinner at Mexico City, those in the Mexican Congress applauded him quite loudly, excepting the occasional conservative. From Mexico, he went into eastern Texas, where he attended functions at Brownsville, San Antonio, Austin, and Houston, and from there to New Orleans.

In New Orleans, he was asked for an audience by an abolitionist who had travelled all the way to Louisiana from Massachusetts by the name of William Lloyd Garrison. Garrison was a strong opponent of slavery and published The Liberator, the foremost abolitionist newspaper in the nation. In a private reception in an upscale New Orleans hotel, Garrison pleaded to the Emperor to abolish slavery, calling it “this land’s greatest hypocrisy” and “an evil system based on the blood and sweat of honest black folk.” Norton was ambivalent; to maintain support, he would have to let the states have their wish. The Congress of the United States had remained dissolved, and only through appointments did the Union remain one. Norton said to Garrison that he would ponder it and consult his advisors.

In September of 1862, such an attitude would change. Norton was visiting Brierfield Plantation, the home of Jefferson Davis, a Senator of that state when Norton dissolved Congress, when he witnessed the appalling conditions under which Davis’ slaves worked. Norton took up that issue with Davis over dinner, to which Davis responded that such a condition was natural for a perceived inferior race of men. Norton, a noted egalitarian whose views on slavery were often suspected to be sympathizing with the abolitionists (despite maintaining an official position of ambivalence), was incensed. After leaving the event, he went to Jackson, Mississippi, and issued easily his most important speech during his rule.

In a crowded area in Jackson, surrounded by the most elite of the Imperial Guard, Norton announced his “Decree of Immediate and Universal Emancipation,” calling on the Imperial army to forcefully liberate the nation’s slaves from their “inhuman condition of bondage and servitude.” The Northerners among his entourage cheered, as well as Southern abolitionist. However, many of the Southerners were enraged, and four men tried to shoot him on separate occasions; members of the Imperial Guard engaged in crowd control while Norton made his escape in a private carriage and later via railroad to Missouri.

News of the Decree of Emancipation spread like wildfire throughout the country, to positive reception in the Northern states and unfathomably negative reception in the Southern states. William Lloyd Garrison declared that the Emperor had made “a godly decision in the liberation of the Negro from his hellish place,” while Frederick Douglass, a prominent former slave and abolitionist, and an ally of Garrison, said that “The Emperor has done a great service to the cause of freedom.” In the South, as was to be expected, the proclamations from various public figures were one of vitriol and disgust with the Emperor. None was more decisive than that of Joseph Emerson “Joe” Brown, Governor of Georgia.

In a fiery speech to the Georgia House of Representatives in the State Capitol building in Milledgeville, Brown denounced the “complete extortion of the legitimate property of good men from the Southern States” that he perceived in the decree, and thereafter condemned the “usurpation of the Republic that the founders of this nation created, and the cowardice of Congress to have listened to him.” Under Brown’s endorsement, a bill promoting the secession of the state of Georgia from the Union was proposed and passed by both houses of the Georgia legislature. The Georgia National Guard, now the Army of the Republic of Georgia, moved to expel any US Army forces from the state and establish themselves as the legitimate army.

Brown’s declaration and the Georgia secession prompted many other states to do the same. In May of 1863, a month after Georgia’s secession, South Carolina, Mississippi, and Alabama announced their secession. In June, Florida, Cuba, and Louisiana followed suit, and in July, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Texas departed. In August, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri signed declarations of secession. At the secession of Missouri, Norton had since ended his tour prematurely and had set up his court in Chicago, Illinois. The future of the Union looked bleak, with many of his general staff, including the eminent Robert E. Lee and Raphael Semmes, had renounced their loyalty to the United States and returned to their home states. Rumor had it that they were planning a confederation among themselves, which would pose a significant counterweight to the US should it come into existence.

Even more worrisome was the fomenting of rebellion in the states of the former Canada. American authority in these states had always been by the barrel of the muskets of the United States Army. The governors of these states, without exception, were from the United States before the war, and ran these states much like military districts; many governors and members of the legislature were either officers or rank-and-file members of the army that had settled in unused or confiscated land. This was only exacerbated by the fact that a national legislature had not existed since Norton’s dissolution of the body in 1859; there was little federal authority to regulate their conduct.

This lack of a federal structure was one of the principal objections to Norton’s rule, even in the North, but especially in the South. Norton was without question a monarch, and many (not without cause) lobbied the word ‘absolutist’ at his reign. He was, however, quite lenient in terms of civil liberties; he was an egalitarian who honestly wished goodwill on his fellow man. Many have said him, then and now, to have been mentally ill. He certainly cared little for what the states did, and that, initially at least, was able to woo over many politicians from the Southern states and from the Democratic Party, and those concerned with the rights of states in general. However, when he did legislate, he did so unilaterally and without consultation from anyone except some trusted advisors such as William Henry Seward. Thusly, in Canada, the army was permitted to run those states as they saw fit, and the planter aristocracy could do the same in the South and in Cuba.

Quebec was in particular a state with an active rebellion, where the Quebecois were resisting the assimilation attempts of the American occupiers. Suspicion of Catholicism led to many soldiers suspecting Quebecois of being loyal to the Pope rather than to the United States, and it was clear that English was the preferred language of the ruling elite. Discrimination in businesses run by the new settlers was commonplace, and Quebecois were often swindled out of their land and property for the benefit of the US Army. They were, just like Anglo-Canadians, ‘the enemy,’ and thusly could be treated as such, in the reasoning of more than a few Americans. Such rampant injustice resulted in the Montreal Riots of 1863, which happened concurrently with the secession crisis, where several soldiers were killed by armed mobs who raided an arsenal. The similarities to John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry were clear: the ringleader of the attack on the armory, Clement Thibodeau, claimed to be “inspired by that noble freedom fighter that fought against tyranny.”

Hence, by August of 1863, Norton had a definite crisis on his hands. Half of the country, and half of the military, had left his service, including many in Canada who took trains or ships to Southern cities, leaving the remaining occupational forces in the former Canada to have far less of an ability to control those states, and riots and other forms of violence only increased in magnitude and frequency. Slaves tried to flee from the upper South to the lower Northern states such as Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, and Pennsylvania, provoking a mixed response from white citizens of these states.

On September 1st, 1863, representatives from the various seceding states met in Milledgeville, Georgia, to discuss a possible confederation between them. Over the course of a week, there was passed a resolution that would form a Confederation of American Republics (CAR) to form a common foreign policy while maintaining the sovereignty of the individual republics that had seceded from the United States. The inclusion of the word ‘republic’ rather than ‘state’ was a clear swipe at the current Imperial structure of the United States, which Joseph Brown declared a “betrayal of the principles it was founded upon.” A common military policy was agreed upon, but ultimately divided into separate Republic commands that would subordinate themselves to overall commands that would exist as the situation required it. Within a month, the individual states ratified it and the first Congress of the Confederation met in the agreed capital of Atlanta, Georgia.

Despite the promises of only having a unified military in wartime, Brown, elected the Confederation’s President, appointed Robert E. Lee as the General of a unified army and issued a call for two hundred thousand troops. “War is coming for us, whether we like it or not,” uttered Brown in a speech to the Confederation Congress. He knew that the hawks in the Imperial Government were planning for an invasion of Confederation territory, and had refused to vacate various forts within the seceded states. Of these, one prize would be the spark of this conflagration. Gosport Shipyard in Norfolk, Virginia, was the United States’ largest naval yard in the country, and had coexisted with the Confederation government of Virginia in Richmond uneasily until September 4th, when the army of Virginia under General Lee’s command ordered the commander of the base, Charles Stuart McCauley, to surrender and give the contents of the shipyard to the Confederation. McCauley was defiant, and thusly the Virginian forces fired on the shipyard to take their armaments and secure the area in the name of their Republic. Certain ships stationed at that shipyard fired back, but were eventually overwhelmed by ships loyal to the Confederation.

News of this confrontation spread rapidly, and to deliberate on a response, Emperor Norton called the Congress of the United States into session at San Francisco. This Congress voted in supermajority to raise an army to restore the seceded states of the Confederation to their rightful place in the Union. Norton appointed a general staff, commanded by those such as Winfield Scott, George B. McClellan, and Ulysses S. Grant. The last of these would become the supreme commander of US forces in Illinois, due to his experience in the Mexican-American War and the War of the Mexican Defense, and being the only officer so qualified in Galena, Illinois, his current place of residence. Other officers, such as William Tecumseh Sherman and Ambrose Burnside would also become notable as the war went on.

The war began with the Imperial invasion of Missouri from Illinois with the intention of taking St. Louis and from there securing control of the Mississippi River to divide the Confederation in two. This slog would continue into January of 1864, when St. Louis would finally fall, and then Memphis became the target and would fall in March. Recruiting for this drive into the Confederation was met with ample volunteers from all over the Union. To the objections of many generals, Norton issued a decree demanding the incorporation of Freedmen’s Battalions, formed of former slaves, to fight against their former masters under the command of white officers, a feat they accomplishes impressively well. Additionally, the governors of the states of the former British North America conscripted armies of both American settlers and those who had lived there before the conquest, including Quebecois. The former British subjects had a longstanding distaste of the ‘peculiar institution’ which culminated in the British Parliament’s Slavery Abolition Act passed in 1833, and were willing to fight to see it destroyed. Despite their hatred of living under what was tantamount to an occupation, the Canadian regiments fought bravely and their members gained high accolades from Norton.

The Mississippi was not the only front; upon the commencement of the war Robert E. Lee was sent to Baltimore, Maryland, to command the invasion of Delaware. Despite action by the general defending the state, William Babcock Hazen, the state was overrun by Confederation forces, which captured Dover and Wilmington. However, Delaware was only a staging ground for a much greater prize: Philadelphia. It was hoped by the Confederation leadership that the taking of such an important city would destabilize the United States, and the bloody siege lasted until June 1865, in which Lee’s forces were sent retreating into Maryland and then Virginia. Washington fell to the forces of Ambrose Bierce and Hazel, who then moved into Virginia in August 1865. Concurrently, the front in Missouri had moved to Kentucky and then to Tennessee, where Memphis, Nashville, and Knoxville all fell to Union forces. From there, Grant and Sherman moved into Georgia and drove for Milledgeville, where they captured the Georgian capital, and later besieged Atlanta. The US Navy had not lain inactive; Admiral Farragut had captured New Orleans in 1865, putting the Mississippi solidly under Union control, and then taking Havana, securing Cuba. In October 1866, the American Civil War was over with the surrender of the Confederation government at Macon, Georgia.

With the end of the war, the North and West were thronging with jubilation and yet with sorrow, as the deaths of several thousand promising young men had died fighting in Missouri or in Pennsylvania or the other states where the slaughter took place. The South was in disarray, with military governors being instated by the Imperial government in San Francisco in these rebellious states. The South was to be treated, in the words of the firebrand Representative of Pennsylvania Thaddeus Stevens, “as an occupied nation. They should be satisfied; they maintained, and still do maintain, that their Confederation was independent, and it shall be treated as a nation that will be annexed into a greater empire, much like ourselves.”

Nevertheless, even the most loyal Northerners conceded that a root cause of the war ripped open a wound and sent the blood, literal and figurative, pouring out of it: that of Norton’s autocratic style of rule. His dissolution of Congress in 1859 and his Decree of Emancipation was common fodder for those who accused him of being a tyrant on the level of George III or of Julius Caesar. To allay criticism, especially after a veteran’s demonstration in San Francisco in early 1867, the Emperor announced that the current Congress would remain in session and would be subject to the election schedule that was the norm during the waning years of the Republic.

The 1868 elections for the Senate and House of Representatives were a very tense affair, especially with the lack of representation from the Southern states still undergoing their military occupations. The House and Senate rapidly became divided into two groups, which formalized themselves as diametrically opposed parties (the Democratic and Whig parties had been dissolved as part of the decree that dissolved Congress): the American Sovereignty Party, led by Stevens, which supported a harsh reconstruction plan, and the American Unity Party, led by the likes of William Henry Seward and Andrew Johnson (the only Senator from a Southern state and hence the only Congressman of the same, being from Tennessee and remaining loyal to the Union during the Civil War), which espoused a more lenient treatment of the formerly seceded states. The former was composed mostly of former Whigs, while the latter was composed mostly of former Democrats (Seward being a notable exception; he was a firm believer in American unity and the union should expand to be as large as possible, assimilating states in Latin America in a benevolent commonwealth; those with similar views tended to side with him and the rest of the American Unionists). The American Sovereigntists had the slimmest of majorities in the House and a smaller one in the Senate, while Emperor Norton himself leaned towards the American Unionists.

This state of affairs continued into 1869 and the early 1870s, as the process of readmission dragged on and on. Norton would occasionally address joint sessions of Congress encouraging leniency towards Confederation veterans but also supporting a firm defense of the rights of freedmen. Imperial decrees in the late 1860s guaranteed universal male suffrage and citizenship, and mandated that the occupational forces use the threat of deadly force to ensure these orders be carried out. Insurgencies in the South, such as those by the Ku Klux Klan, were stamped out ruthlessly and without trial as per Imperial orders from San Francisco.

During this time, in 1869 Norton negotiated with the Russian Empire the purchase of Russian Alaska. Of little value to the European empire, it was the site of some areas for naval bases desired by the army, as well as the manifest destiny-esque desires of those like Seward who demanded American expansion, free of slavery, at all costs. This treaty put an end to the border dispute between the United States and Russia which had previously had a border disagreement that dated back to the times when the State of Columbia was still British. This agreement put fears of a war between the two powers to rest, and that the war-weary nation would no longer have to suffer.

Additionally, under Norton's orders, the military began supporting the construction of an experimental airship made by a man named Marriot as a method of bringing fame to the United States and restoring it to international goodwill. Some early tests were successful but ultimately proved impractical; Marriot nevertheless was given high honors by the Emperor and was a favorite at Imperial Court in San Francisco.

In 1873, Norton announced that he would take a ‘reconciliation tour’ into the occupied states in an attempt to promote a feeling of national goodwill, a tour which would also include the Canadian states and Keewatin Territory, to “help them know the benefits of Union.” When he left from San Francisco on the train, he went from southern California into Arizona and New Mexico Territories (which were undergoing negotiations to be admitted to the Union as states; Norton had made very clear since the beginning of reign that the very concept of a territory was ‘un-American’ and that they should be moved to statehood as soon as possible), and from there into Texas. However, when in New Mexico Territory, he was greeted by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, famous members of the Woman’s Suffrage Movement which had been burgeoning since the decade before the Civil War. Behind them was a massive rally for woman’s suffrage which had been arranged to meet the Emperor to plead him for him to issue an Imperial decree legalizing women’s suffrage nationwide.

This was a bold move; an Imperial decree on any subject other than something ceremonial would be received by Congress as a hostile act; the Northerners in charge had accepted his rule in the early 1860s and the War of the Mexican Defense only grudgingly, and pressed to have legislative authority trump imperial authority in most if not all cases. However, such decrees were still legal, and it appeared that the United States Military would be supportive of any measure that he would pass unilaterally.

This was not necessarily the case. Many Generals were of the belief that Congress should be restored while the Emperor should maintain mostly ceremonial power, and advocated something along the lines of Britain. One of Norton’s staunchest critics was Jacob Dolson Cox the military governor of Alabama who had commanded an army during the invasion of Maryland and Virginia. Cox, from Ohio, was the leader of several generals who backed the hesitantly pro-Congress sentiment that viewed the Emperor as a tyrant, albeit one that was in the right regarding the seceded states. “We fought for union and liberty,” said Cox, “not for his empire.” However, Cox and his followers wanted to reunify the country and were opposed to Norton’s positions on women’s suffrage and the refusal to readmit the Southern states after military occupation.

In spite of this, Norton was ultimately convinced of the need for women’s suffrage and announced a decree in a public area in Santa Fe legalizing the right for women to vote throughout the United States. The national press was in an uproar, some supporting it but most with a hostile vitriol that did not cease from any attack on their sovereign, justifiable or otherwise. Many accused him of sympathizing with anarchist thought (a movement in its early stages in Europe), hopelessly reckless, and desiring the destruction of the American family. Nevertheless, he stood by his convictions and continued on with his tour into Texas, Mississippi, and Alabama.

It was in Montgomery, Alabama, that this tour would come to an abrupt end. While giving a speech defending the Women’s Suffrage Decree, General Cox arrived with a hundred-strong force to arrest the Emperor on the charges of bypassing Congressional authority and the far more grave charge of treason, for his 1859 dismissal of President Buchanan and his abolition and rule without Congress until the Civil War. Cox’s regulars raised their rifles should the Emperor take any action, and the Imperial Guardsmen did the same. A firefight broke out when Norton defended his positions, but the regulars were able to capture Norton, and took him to the train station where he would be taken to San Francisco to stand trial.

As if the Constitution were in effect, the House of Representatives passed a resolution to have the Emperor impeached. When he arrived in California, he was put on trial by the Senate, which voted to convict him of the charges brought forth by Cox. To punish him, despite mass public protestation, he was imprisoned in an isolated location in Keewatin Territory, where he would die in 1880. The nation was then under temporary depression and mourning, a mood discouraged by the military and Congress. Demonstrations in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco turned violent, with three hundred demonstrators killed between them.

General Cox, in this climate of political turmoil, announced that he would assume the title of ‘provisional president’ until the elections of 1876, where he was elected legitimately albeit under severe restrictions of suffrage for ‘rioters and former Confederation soldiers.’ This restriction continued decades, and the next several presidents were from the military and not from either of the established parties. Women’s suffrage suffered during this time, and civil liberties and the rights of African-Americans went on a marked decline. The Southern states were readmitted by the 1880s with many anti-freedman laws enacted by those states. The fall of militarist government and the reestablishment of constitutional government in the 1936 elections was the only end to such policies, and suffrage and equality amendments to the Constitution were passed by 1940.

Emperor Norton is looked on by historians and the common person with mixed views. During military rule, he was reviled and turned into a scapegoat for the nation’s troubles. In the general public, he was a national hero despite his autocratic tendencies. With the elections of 1936, the newly inaugurated President Herbert Charles Putnam, the Anti-Militarist candidate and the first to restore Congress to a truly powerful state (despite their rhetoric, the militarists wanted social stability; midterm elections were often rigged), said that “Emperor Norton was a noble man who wanted the best for America and American Liberty, but was corrupted by his autocratic, sometimes warmongering tendencies. He is an example to be heeded but not necessarily followed. He was an idealist, but an idealist blind to reality.” he said as he promoted the Women’s Suffrage Amendment in 1938, and made similar statements in his support of the Anti-Discrimination Amendment in 1939. To solidify the Emperor’s good reputation in the 20th century, a monument to him was dedicated to him in 1940 and attended by President Putnam.