Amazing parallels to how the contemporary press, in 2016, created Donald Trump’s candidacy for the GOP Presidential nomination and how it played out for Daniel Pratt, Junior, in 1869, at least as depicted in this story. Pratt’s life, as shown in his Wikipedia page, was a bit less charmed:
A RIVAL TO EMPEROR NORTON.
From the New York Evening Post, 1869.
One of the Boston papers makes the satisfactory announcement that Daniel Pratt, Junior, “The Great American Traveler,” was inhospitably received at Newport. This was not always thus, and the inhospitality may be take as an indication that Pratt Junior’s travels are coming to an end. This poor, ignorant, half-witted creature began his travels about twenty five years ago, and from that time to the present he has managed, once a year at least, to visit nearly every city in New England, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and all the great watering-places from Nahant to Cape May during the season.
To all appearances, Pratt is a half-witted fellow, whose leading idea is that he is a perpetual candidate for the Presidency of the United States. Indeed, he has formally announced himself as a candidate in every election for the past quarter of century, though sometimes, in a closely contested canvass, he has magnanimously withdrawn in favor of one of the other of the regularly nominated candidates.
The Boston papers began this business for Pratt. For years he was reported and petted by the Boston Press, which made nearly as much of Pratt as it did of Webster, Everett or Choate; that is, he was as much talked about. He was now and then persuaded to deliver a lecture, of which he always had the manuscript in his hat or coat pocket; he ran races with George Washington Mellen, who was another Boston character, and was also Pratt’s rival for the Presidency, and these races were duly reported, to the amusement of the vulgar, and the further advancement of Pratt.
Whenever the Great American Traveler entered a town or city, his first call was upon the editors of the papers, to whom he presented himself and his credentials, and was, of course, duly announced. He next went to the best hotel, where he stopped a day, two days, or a week, according to the patience of the landlord. During this stay, in every place he managed to amuse the idle by his apparent simplicity and firm belief that he was designed to be President. What did all this amount to ? Why, it amounted to this – that by playing the fool, Pratt Junior has managed to travel about and live on the fat of the land at the expense of those who though they were having a deal of fun out of him.
On the cars and on steamboats, his simple announcement that he was “Daniel Pratt, Junior, The Great,” etc., paid his fare; at the best hotels the same announcement settled his bills; the name was the “open sesame” everywhere; everybody knew him; in time he knew everybody, and this for many years he has actually lived, moved – especially moved – and had his being on the sole capital of his assumed simplicity, or mild insanity. His recent rejection, however, at Newport, which shows that even Pratt is “played out,” is a warning that no other American need try to get his living in the same way. There can be but one traveling Pratt of the period, and Pratt’s period as a traveler has come to a full stop.
Daily Alta California, 29 August 1869