The Disastrous War

CR101 Radio - Podcast Network · May 27, 2026 · 14m

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…