Stonewall Jackson, the Minute Men and a Vietnam War Answer Song
The Confederate States of America lost Stonewall Jackson on May 10, 1863, victim of friendly fire from one of his troops.
The country music world lost Stonewall Jackson on December 4, 2021, at 5:35 a.m., victim of vascular dementia.
Some historians say the death of the first Stonewall could have cost the Confederacy the Civil War. The loss of the latest Stonewall cost the music world a solid honky-tonk singer, of whom we don’t have enough.
Stonewall the singer was beloved in the country music world, evidenced by a blizzard of tweets and postings his death inspired from inside that world. He joined the Grand Ol’ Opry in 1956 and while he hadn’t performed live since 2012, he remained a member until his death.
He’s best known for “Waterloo,” a crossover smash in 1958, plus some real nice country hits like “Don’t Be Angry,” “Why I’m Walkin’ ” and “A Wound Time Can’t Erase.”
He had a lot of other records that reached the country charts and hovered around the middle. Not enough, you could argue, to explain why he was so revered.
I would suggest at least part of the answer lies with “The Minute Men Are Turning (In Their Graves),” which only reached №24 on the Billboard charts in early 1966, but stands today as one of the two or three most aggressive answer songs to the protest music and movement of the 1960s.
“What’s happened to our heritage / What’s happened to our pride,” it goes. “Since when do free Americans pull for the other side / Did we send food to Hitler’s troops or praise the enemy / Did all our children die in vain / Defending liberty?”
“The Minute Men” was written by Harlan Howard, one of the greatest country songwriters ever. His resume includes “I Fall to Pieces,” “Heartaches by the Number,” “Pick Me Up On Your Way Down,” “Somewhere Tonight,” “Streets of Baltimore” and a hundred more.
“The Minute Men” was clearly heartfelt to Howard, who several years later released an album of his own titled To The Silent Majority With Love. Numbers there included “Better Get Your Pride Back Boy” and “Uncle Sam (I’m a Patriot).”
But when a song plays on the radio, no one announces the writer, so “The Minute Men” was branded as a Stonewall Jackson song while it was resonating well beyond its chart position.
When Jackson sang “I can’t condemn a man who feels that taking life is wrong / But I fail to understand a man who won’t defend his home,” he was expressing a widespread frustration among people sometimes called “Middle Americans” over the growing protests against our involvement in the Vietnam War.
It’s easy to wave off the specifics in the lyrics — no American home was under threat or needed defending from a war 8,000 miles away — but the larger concept struck a chord and very likely struck many listeners as something that needed to be said.
It’s also easy to say the song contributed to the anger and division of the day, because it did. By early 1966, however, that horse had long since kicked its way out of the barn, and both sides considered that level of intensity essential.
For Stonewall Jackson’s part, he didn’t make a career out of socio-political commentary. His next release was “Blues Plus Booze (Means I Lose),” which was a bigger hit and a more representative example of what kept Jackson popular through seven decades.
Like other honky-tonk singers from Hank Williams to George Jones, Jackson at his best sang catchy tunes about the everyday dramas of life. By that measure, the subject matter of “The Minute Men” was an outlier. Still, a whole lot of listeners very likely felt like Jackson was singing something they were thinking, which is what successful songs do.
Stonewall Jackson’s father named him for the Confederate general he claimed was an ancestor. Whether he was seems unclear. It’s quite clear that Stonewall the singer continued Stonewall the general’s tradition of standing up for something that has been largely repudiated by history, but which he saw as a proud tradition.
Nor, it needs to be remembered, was he alone.
