Puck's Advice Gratis to Some Editorial Shriekers for Grant

Joseph Keppler's 1878 Puck double-page cartoon rebuffs newspaper editors clamoring for Ulysses S. Grant's return to the presidency. The composition splits neatly: at right, an idealized equestrian statue of Grant—pedestal inscribed Vicksburg and Appomattox—looms over a weary, stooped Grant on foot, trailed by a pack of dogs whose heads bear the faces of his scandal-tainted associates: George Robeson, Orville Babcock, William Belknap, and others implicated in Grant-era corruption. At left, a dejected Uncle Sam sits on steps while Cupid, tiny and top-hatted, looks on. The caption's pun is the argument: Grant's war record is heroic bronze, but the living man drags too much corrupt baggage to deserve a third term. Keppler's caricatures follow the era's standard exaggerated physiognomy—jowly, bloated faces common across Puck's partisan cartooning—without the racial ethnic stereotyping he employed elsewhere.