The second prominent characteristic of guerrilla warfare, is the license it gives to take by force from supposed enemies or neutrals, horses, cash, munitions of war, and, in short, any thing which can aid the party for which he fights; with the promise of full pay for whatever he brings off to his head-quarters.  This is the essential principle of the system, giving it its power and destructiveness.  As it displaces patriotism from the breast of the fighter, and substitutes in its room the desire for plunder, the men thus engaged become highway robbers in organized and authorized bands.  Nor do guerrilla bands long confine their depredations to known enemies.  Wherever a good horse can be found, wherever silver plate is supposed to be secreted, wherever money might be expected, there they concentrate and rob without inquiry as to the character of the owner.  Hence the system is destructive to all confidence, and to the safety of even innocent and defenseless females.

It requires no prophet’s ken to foresee that the Confederate authorities have commenced a system which will utterly demoralize all engaged in it; destroy the peace, and endanger the safety of non-combatants, and eventually reduce to ruin and anarchy the whole community over which these bands of robbers have their range.

This process has already commenced, and if the loyal troops were withdrawn to-day from all Secessia, and the South allowed its independence, the people would find themselves in the hands of bandits to harass and plunder for months to come, and would have long scores of wrongs to right, which have been inflicted upon neutrals and friends of the Rebellion by its professed soldiers.  Should the contest continue for two or three years longer, the South bids fair to lapse into the semi-barbarism of Mexico, or the robber-ruled anarchy of Spain after the Peninsular war.  The legitimate tendency of the system is understood by the Southern generals, and some of them resisted its introduction; but the desperation of the whole Southern mind swept away opposition, and they are now embarked on a stormy sea, which will assuredly wreck the craft, if it be not sooner sunk by loyal broadsides.

How the government should treat these free-booters when captured, as some of them have been, is plain, if the usual laws of war are to be followed; they are to be punished as outlaws, and hung or shot.  But, in this case, can it be done safely?  There were, when I left Secessia, not less than 10,000 men organized as guerrillas.  There may be far more at this writing.  Is it possible to treat such a number as banditti, without inaugurating a more bloody retaliation and massacre than the world has ever seen?  I only raise the question.