Adam Badeau, Military history of Ulysses S. Grant from April 1861 to April 1865. Volume 1

[149] raise their spirits, depressed by the recent failure, and also to secure the line of communication by the Mississippi against attacks from the Arkansas side. McClernand immediately acquiesced in Sherman's proposition, and moved his force up the Arkansas, the fleet under Porter accompanying. A naval bombardment, lasting several days, occurred; and on the 11th, the troops assaulted the works, when the post surrendered, after a fight of three hours, in which the squadron bore a conspicuous part. Five thousand prisoners and seventeen pieces of cannon fell into the hands of the victors; McClernand lost about a thousand men, in killed, wounded, and missing. The guns of the fort were silenced by the fleet, and Admiral Porter received the sword of its commander, but the troops were surrendered to the army.

This operation was planned and executed without Grant's knowledge or consent, and he was at first displeased with the movement, whose effect on the contemplated campaign was not perceptible. Lacking any confidence in McClernand's military judgment, and supposing that the plan emanated solely from that officer, he did not give it the same consideration it would have received, had he known that Sherman first suggested the idea. It seemed to him a mere side move, contributing in no degree to the great result at which he was aiming; and, throughout the war, he preferred to engage in no enterprise that did not tend directly to the accomplishment of his main object. He expressed his dissatisfaction in this instance both to McClernand and to Halleck, but, subsequently, became convinced that the reasons offered in favor of the movement were sufficient to warrant McClernand in making it.