Pope's captured officers.
We understand that the officers of
Pope's command, lately taken prisoners by
Stonewall Jackson, professed never to have heard of
President Davis a late proclamation with reference to the commissioned brigands of that army, and declared that they had supposed they were engaged in civilized warfare!
This is the coolest thing of the season.
A civilized warfare!
They burn down our houses' destroy our property, insult our women arm the contrabands against us, hang and shoot our patriotic guarrillar, throw whole communities of peaceful citizens into jail to be gibbeted in case our guarrillar kill any more of their bands of cut-throats and robbers, and consider all this a civilized mode of warfare.
It is only when the same kind of civilization is applied to themselves that they discover their mistake.
The truth is, we have borne these horrible outrages so long and so quietly that our moderation and forbearance have been attributed to fear, and to an inward conviction that we are wrong-doors and deserve all the punishment we are receiving at Yankee hands.
They will now discover their mistake.
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and a life for a life, will be henceforth meted out to these robbers and murderers with the most scrupulous accuracy.
It is true that ten thousand lives of such depraved wretches could not stone for the life of one pure, high minded patriot; but as each of them values his existence as highly as an honest man the wholesome lesson of retribution will not be without its influence.
All the atrocities and horrors that may characterize the war hereafter rest upon the heads of the invaders, who have inaugurated the system of hanging prisoners, and who have manifested in their whole conduct of the war a degree of inhumanity and barbarity which has shocked the moral sense of the world.
We trust most devoutly that Old Stonewall may succeed in capturing the arch fiend and savage,
Pope himself.
If he were not as fleet of foot as black in heart, we might anticipate a luxury, compared with which the capture of a thousand other
Yankee Generals would be dull and insipid.
Pope and
Butler!
If those two precious miscreants could only fall into Southern hands!
