From Jackson, Miss.
[correspondence of the Richmond Dispatch]War is reputable when legitimate, but such a war as this, now going on, is a slander to our species, a disgrace to the civilization of the country. I need not tell you all I have seen — all I have heard. You can imagine the appearance of a town after a regular, old fashioned sack of the darker ages. And yet these fellows will swear against the evidence of your senses that no private property has suffered — no person outraged. It is idle for any one to say our soldiers — our army — are as thievish and as brutal as the Yankees. Impossible! When Stuart visited Pennsylvania his troops doffed their hats to Yankee farmers, and asked permission to enter their premises for a glass of water! O! mockery of war! Shall we be ever respected or feared, so long as we treat our enemies as Christians? Better give up all — better turn our swords into plough shares than to make war so chivalrously, so magnanimously. Better think like Turks and fight like Indians, than to make a mockery of Christianity. Why be trammelled by dead laws? Why not fight the Devil with fire? Shall we ever convince by fair words and charitable deeds? Did God, according to Milton, fight the Arch Enemy through his angels, or throw the pearls of mercy and peace before his swinish legions? Shall we not imitate God, then, and oppose sword to sword, torment to torment? I am at a loss to comprehend the creature, man. He makes war like a Turk and talks like a Christian, or talks like a Turk and makes war like a Christian. We shall never be rid of this war, in my opinion, until we carry home the terrors of their visitation. We must burn Carthage to save Rome! We must have our Scipio. The Yankee Hannibal can subsist his armies on the fruits of our labor for many more years than the Carthaginian subsisted his troops on the vitals of bleeding Rome. I cannot understand why I should be made to fight a duel on honorable principles with a fellow whom I have never wronged, and who is void of honor himself. If self-defence is the first law of nature, it is not first in military ethics. Burn, steal, rob, ravish, murder, and military priests will grant you absolution in the form of a parable.
But now for facts. Grant entered Jackson, after slight skirmishing, last Friday, burnt the Confederate house, the depots, the Penitentiary, the factories, a block of buildings next below the Capitol Square, evacuated it after two days stay, and marched towards Vicksburg. --I fear we shall lose Vicksburg and Mississippi. Pemberton will surrender, if Mississippi won't. [It is to be hoped not.] Johnston is working hard to organize a force to succor Vicksburg. We have no communication with that town. Grant has the railroad, and some say he is in Vicksburg. Jackson will henceforth be fortified and made the rendezvous for our troops. The commissaries, etc., are ordered back, which is a sign. I have heard of no cotton destroyed. The Yankees collect invoices for future delivery.
