The illustration shows James Garfield and Winfield S. Hancock nailing a Chinese man between two "Anti-Chinese" boards labeled "Republican Plank" and "Democratic Plank".
As illustrated by San Franciscan publication The Wasp, many Americans' anti-Chinese sentiment was rooted in the belief that Chinese labor posed a threat to the white American working class.
Yellow Terror is a term used interchangeably with "Yellow Peril," which refers to Western fears that Asian people seek to plague the West and erode democracy and Christianity.