Gobineau's views were repeated in substance by troops of acolytes. None had more power and influence on late-century views of Haiti than Spenser St. John. St. John's Hayti, or the Black Republic presented Haiti in stark relief, a country in perpetual despair. Its fundamental fault was its Africanness.  
As long as [the black man] is influenced by contact with the white man [...] he gets on very well. But place him free from all such influence, as in Hayti, and he shows no signs of improvement; on the contrary, he is gradually retrograding to the African tribal customs, and without exterior pressure will fall into the state of the inhabitants of the Congo (St. John, 1884, p. 134).  
St. John's views extended notoriously to Haitian culture, particularly Vodou, which he presented as a cannibalistic cult. This argument was influential. Haiti existed principally in this negative way and so too did Africa. There was ready support from those seeking racialist justification for their disdain of African peoples. J. A. Froude in a widely read dissertation on the necessity for European colonialism over Africans on the continent and in the Caribbean was quick to point to independent Haiti, a country wracked by cycles of political instability. 'The effect of leaving the Negro nature to itself is apparent at last [...]. Hayti is the most ridiculous caricature of civilization in the whole world' (Froude, 1888, pp. 305-306).