During the summer of 1990, the leading news consisted of the events in Iraq and Kuwait. One of the more heinous acts in modern times was committed by Iraq, under the leadership of Saddam Hussein. He had the audacity to take Americans and other foreigners as hostages and use them as human shields to protect his vital military bases. The idea of this inhumane and barbaric policy brought down upon Iraq the condemnation of the entire civilized world. Where do you suppose Hussein got the idea of using prisoners as human shields to protect military installations? Perhaps Hussein had been studying the war measures used by the Yankees in their invasion of the South!Approximately the same time Hussein was setting up his human shield, the Yankee myth-makers were hard at work making a "documentary" entitled "The Civil War." As we have noted, this propaganda series was produced by a prejudiced man from the North-the place where so many slaves were brought into this country after the Yankee flesh merchants had kidnapped them from their homes in Africa. The Northern myth-makers seem to have trouble remembering such facts that are not in keeping with the official Yankee myth of history. Now let's see if our Southern history will help us determine where Hussein got his idea about using humans as a shield to protect military installations. In the summer of 1864 the South was pressed on all fronts. The city of Charleston, South Carolina, was under a Yankee blockade. The combined guns of the Yankee forts and the Union navy were shelling the city. The Confederates were answering the Yankees shot for shot. The Yankee government took six hundred Southern POWs and sent them to Charleston. The Yankee invader had hit upon a great idea-"Why not put Southern POWs in front of our position and make the Confederates fire on their own men?" By this method the Yankees hoped to prevent further shelling of the Yankee position by the Confederates.47Captain Walter MacRae of the Seventh North Carolina was one of the six hundred hostages used by the United States government as a part of its human shield. He gives a vivid account of life under the guns and the resultant horrors visited upon these innocent Southern POWs. The prisoners were placed in a stockade less than two acres square. They were beneath the guns of the Yankee fort and situated so that every shot from the Confederate forts ". . . must either pass over our heads or right through the pen [stockade]. Any which fell short or exploded a tenth of a second too soon, must strike death and destruction through our crowded ranks."48Captain MacRae describes the poor living conditions and food that was issued to the Southern POWs. The men were confined in a very small area (two acres), and no sanitary facilities were provided. They had to eat, sleep, and care for their wounded in the same place where garbage and sewage were dumped. Their only supply of water was from holes they dug in the sand. The water holes quickly filled with a mixture of rain water, salt water, garbage, and sewage. Their food consisted of provisions that had been condemned by the Federal government as unfit for Yankee troops. These "rations" consisted of worm- and insect-infested hardtack, a one-inch square, one-half-inch-thick piece of pork, and eight ounces of sour corn meal. The POWs were placed under the guard of the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts (Glory) and its cruel commander, Col. E. N. Hollowell. When some of the POWs protested the conditions of the rations to Colonel Hollowell, he replied, in true Yankee fashion, ". . . there was meat enough in the crackers, bugs, and worms."49Within the stockade, the Yankees roped off a perimeter. Any POW who walked too close would be shot. Colonel Hollowell also gave orders to the black troops to shoot into any gathering of POWs larger than ten men or at any POW who broke any other rule of the prison. This barbaric attempt of the Yankee invader to use Southern POWs as a shield to protect their positions did not work. Captain MacRae noted that the Southern gunners did slow down and take more time to aim (the better to hit the Yankee invader). With each well-placed shot from the Southern guns, a great shout of joy would go up from the Southern hostages. When the Southern guns fired, someone in the stockade would shout and everyone would hit the dirt and watch as the friendly fire would do its work on the invader. After a few months of this bombardment, the Yankees removed the men to another prison where they were treated no better, but at least they were not in danger of being killed\by their own men. The Yankee apologists tell us that the North was justified in using Southern POWs as a human shield because the Confederates were treating Northern prisoners just as badly. This accusation was denied by both the people of Charleston and by the Confederate government. Yankee major general C. V. Foster stated: Our of ricers, prisoners of war in Charleston, have been ascertained to be as follows [rations]: Fresh meat three quarters of a pound or one half pound hard bread or one half pint of meal; beans, one fifth pint.50This amount was about five times the quantity given to the Southern POWs held by the Yankees. Foster, in a letter to his superior, Gen. Henry Halleck, made the following statement: Many of the people of Charleston exerted themselves in every way to relieve the necessities of our men, and freely, as far as their means would allow, made contributions of food and clothing.51He also stated that the kind and just treatment the Northern POWs received from the South had induced over half (sixty-five percent) of the men to go over to the Southern cause and sign an oath of allegiance to the Confederacy. It may be noted that only one percent of the six hundred Southern POWs held by General Foster went over to the Yankee side. This, in itself, is evidence that the Northern POWs were treated kindly by the people and government of Charleston. The next time you hear a liberal news commentator venting his wrath on evil tyrants who use innocent human beings as hostages or human shields, stop and remember the six hundred Southern POWs at Charleston. When you hear or read about terrorists such as Saddam Hussein, stop and ask yourself, "Where do you suppose he got that idea?"
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