Sesquicentennial Civil War Event: Egremont Town Basket Picnic
“Any understanding of this nation has to be based, and I mean really based, on an understanding of the Civil War. I believe that firmly. It defined us. The Revolution did what it did. Our involvement in European wars, beginning with the First World War, did what it did. But the Civil War defined us as what we are and it opened us to being what we became, good and bad things. And it is very necessary, if you are going to understand the American character in the twentieth century, to learn about this enormous catastrophe of the mid-nineteenth century. It was the crossroads of our being, and it was a hell of a crossroads.”
The town figured in the Revolutionary War when General Henry Knox passed through North Egremont in the winter of 1775-1776 to deliver artillery that was used to force the British Army to evacuate Boston, and was well represented in the Civil War, recently celebrated for the sesquicentennial with a town basket picnic sponsored by the Friends of Egremont History.
