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On the 12th of April, 1861, three days before this report was published in the Greenfield Gazette, the Confederate States had begun shelling Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. Although President Abraham Lincoln did not make a declaration of war, in effect the war had begun between the Union and Confederacy. By the 15th Fort Sumter had surrendered and had been evacuated. On the 15th President Lincoln made his first call for troops, 75,000 volunteers to serve for ninety days. The uncertainty and confusion of those days is evident in this report. Although the two countries were at war, it would not be until July that the first real battle would be engaged. It was near Manassas, Virginia, in the chaotic battle that would be known as the First Battle of Bull Run.

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