The Disastrous War

In “The Disastrous War” (Chalcedon Report No. 369), Rushdoony argues that the American Civil War was the greatest tragedy in U.S. history, not only because of its immense human cost but because it entrenched a worldview of irreconcilable conflict that still divides the nation. He contends that the war was driven less by Biblical moral reasoning than by Enlightenment humanism shared by influential leaders on both sides—especially Unitarian, Transcendentalist, and Hegelian ideas that exalted revolutionary conflict as the means to justice and progress. Slavery, though real and evil, could have been abolished peacefully, as it was elsewhere, but extremists North and South demanded confrontation rather than resolution. Rushdoony shows that Southern secessionist leaders were largely non-Christian in outlook, while Northern abolitionist rhetoric was often anti-Christian and revolutionary, united by a belief in the “conflict of interests” rather than the Biblical doctrine of moral reconciliation under God. This philosophical shift transformed a legal dispute into a revolutionary war, inaugurated the doctrine of total war (seen in figures like Sherman and Quantrill), and replaced Christian moral antithesis—resolved by repentance and regeneration—with annihilating conflict. The legacy of this war, he concludes, is the ongoing fragmentation of American life, rooted in a humanistic worldview that seeks peace through destruction rather than justice through God’s law and grace.