James A. Garfield: 'From the Tow-path to the White House'

Joseph Keppler's caricature depicts President Garfield with exaggerated proportions—an oversized head and torso atop spindly legs—a visual strategy common to 19th-century political satire. The cartoon's subtitle references Garfield's humble origins as a canal worker, a biographical detail used to comment on his unexpected rise to the presidency. Keppler, a German-American lithographer, pioneered the color chromolithograph as a tool for political commentary in American newspapers. His work established visual conventions that would define the emerging medium: distorted human anatomy for rhetorical effect, symbolic costume and setting, and witty captions that anchored meaning. Such caricatures in the Sunday supplement pages influenced how comics would eventually blend words and images to shape public opinion and entertain mass audiences.