Satire springs from a firm conviction of what is right and wrong,
unimbued with any hesitancy, vacillation, or ambivalence.
The following editorial in the Diamond Field (1874, October 10) is typical in its efforts to naturalize criminality and mark deviance as inherent to the African by virtue of biology and upbringing: [Natives] are held to be just as capable as civilized men of holding property and exercising rights which entail duties to society, which ignorant and unlettered as they are,
unimbued with moral sense or religious feeling, they neither admit nor practice.
In one another's substance finding food, Like flames too pure and light and
unimbued To nourish their bright lives with baser prey, Which point to Heaven and cannot pass away: One hope within two wills, one will beneath Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death, One Heaven, one Hell, one immortality, And one annihilation.