"The expedition failed," says General Grant, "more from want of knowledge as to what would be required to open this route than from any impracticability in the navigation of the streams and bayous through which it was proposed to pass. Want of this knowledge led the expedition on until difficulties were encountered, and then it would become necessary to send back to Young's Point for the means of removing them. This gave the enemy time to remove forces to effectually checkmate further progress, and the expedition was withdrawn when within a few hundred yards of free and open navigation to the Yazoo."
Admiral Porter also, in his official report, speaks of the want of means of moving the troops through the bayous, as the chief difficulty; "for," he remarks, "there were never yet any two men who would labor harder than Generals Grant and Sherman to forward an expedition for the overthrow of Vicksburg." He continues: "The army officers worked like horses to enable them to accomplish what was desired.... No other general could have done better, or as well as Sherman, but he had not the means for this peculiar kind of transportation."
Under orders brought by McClernand the Army of the Tennessee was divided in four corps, known as the Thirteenth, Fifteenth, Sixteenth and Seventeenth, commanded respectively by McClernand, Sherman, Hurlbut and McPherson, Grant remaining commander of the whole. Sherman's corps formed the right wing, and consisted of the First Division, under General Steele, and the Second Division under General David Stuart, in the absence of Morgan L. Smith. Immediately upon arriving at Milliken's Bend, on January 4th, the expedition was sent on in the same boats, escorted by Porter's gunboats, to attack Arkansas Post, or Fort Hindman, an old settlement on the north bank of the Arkansas River, fifty miles from its mouth. This Fort was a very strong work, situated on a high bluff at the head of a horseshoe bend in the river. It was strongly armed and garrisoned by five thousand men under General Churchill, who had been directed to hold the place till his last man was dead. Sherman himself suggested the movement against this place, considering the capture of it necessary to the reduction of Vicksburg and freeing of the Mississippi.