June 11, 1863, Clarke County Journal (Alabama)
A correspondent of the Savannah News, writing from near Jackson, says:
I saw yesterday and the day before, two hundred and seventy-two Yankee prisoners, who were captured in and around Jackson. It makes them very mad to call them Yankees. They call themselves “Western men,” and say if them d–––d blue bellied rascals in Virginia would only fight as they have fought, they could have whipped us long before this. They all seem confident of success in this State, and are very impertinent in their boasting. They say they intend to overrun and possess Mississippi, and that they have three hundred thousand troops in that State to do it with–that they never saw or heard of such a place as Vicksburg, but that they intend to have it before long, as they had plenty of grape and canister shot. They seem to think that fighting on gunboats is nonsense, and are opposed to fighting on them. They were astonished to see us so well clothed, and said we look like gentlemen and not soldiers. I never saw a set of men dressed so badly as they were. I saw a dozen or more of them who had no shoes on, and I should judge from their appearance that their army is in a much worse condition than ours.