To each division three batteries of artillery were given, including at least one battery belonging to the regular army, thus furnishing, except for the second division, an experienced regular officer as chief of artillery of the division. The cavalry was kept, for the most part, unattached, mainly serving in La Fourche, at Baton Rouge, and with the moving column. The 21st Indiana, changed into the 1st Indiana heavy artillery, was told off to man the siege train, for which duty it was admirably suited. When all had joined, the whole force available for active operations that should not uncover New Orleans was about 25,000. Two thirds, however, were new levies, and of these half were nine months' men. Some were armed with guns that refused to go off. Others did not know the simplest evolutions. In one instance, afterwards handsomely redeemed, the colonel, having to disembark his men, could think of no way save by the novel command, "Break ranks, boys, and get ashore the best way you can." The cavalry, except the six old companies, was poor and quite insufficient in numbers. Of land and water transportation, both indispensable to any possible operation, there was barely enough for the movement of a single division. In Washington, Banks had been led to expect that he might count on the depots or the country for all the material required for moving his army; yet Butler found New Orleans on the brink of starvation; the people had now to be fed, as well as the army, and the provisions that formerly came from the West by the great river had now to find their way from the North by the Atlantic and the Gulf. The depots were calculated, and barely sufficed, for the old force of the department, while the country could furnish very little at best, and nothing at all until it should be occupied.
Again, until he reached his post, Banks was not informed that the Confederates were in force anywhere on the river save Vicksburg, yet, in fact, Port Hudson, 250 miles below Vicksburg and 135 miles above New Orleans, was found strongly intrenched with twenty-nine heavy guns in position and garrisoned by 12,000 men. Long before Banks could have assembled and set in motion a force sufficient to cope with this enemy behind earthworks, the 12,000 became 16,000. Moreover, Banks was not in communication either with Grant or with McClernand; he knew next to nothing of the operations, the movements, or the plans of either; he had not the least idea when the expedition would be ready to move from Memphis; he was even uncertain who the commander of the Northern column was to be. On their part, not only were Grant, the department commander; McClernand, the designated commander of the Vicksburg expedition; and Sherman, its actual commander, alike ignorant of every thing pertaining to the movements of the column from the Gulf, but, at the most critical period of the campaign, not one of the three was in communication with either of the others. Under these conditions, all concert between the co-operating forces was rendered impossible from the start, and the expectations of the government that Banks would go against Vicksburg immediately on landing in Louisiana were doomed to sharp and sudden, yet inevitable, disappointment.