Vanity Fair, Vol. 6, No. 135

A wood engraving from the American comic weekly Vanity Fair, depicting a caricatured figure operating a steam locomotive labeled "The G.F. Train: Going it like Townsend, with Bell on Track." The figure, with exaggerated facial features and wild hair, hunches over the engine's controls in a landscape strewn with debris. The cover's ornate lettering and frieze of cherubs frame a satirical commentary on Union politics and personalities during the Civil War. Published in New York by Lees H. Byman, this periodical combined wood-engraved political caricature with comic verse, offering Northern audiences visual and textual mockery of contemporary events and public figures.