The innocent elect to make a common cause with the guilty.
Therefore, THEY, THEMSELVES, BECOME GUILTY of the highest crimes, as Accessories after the Fact.
In law and morals, there is not an innocent man left in that battalion, whose every member deliberately conceals the murderers, aids and abets them after full knowledge of the crime.
Considering them all as guilty, the President ordered their dishonorable discharge.
Why not?
They had committed crimes involving turpitude, degrading the uniform.
They had sullenly defied the President’s appeal to their honor, and hence his notice to disband them.
The innocent had elected to share the guilt of the guilty, and thus the whole battalion was guilty.
***
Fanatical friends of the blacks say that the President should not have punished the innocent.