ft which was laid across the stream. Everything was ready
on the night of the 31st, but a dense fog setting in prevented the
movement.

The continued rains now rendered the position of the army dangerous,
and it was re-embarked on the 2d of January. The enemy apparently did
not discover the movement till it was nearly finished, when they sent
down three regiments with field pieces to attack the transports, a
movement quickly checked by the fire of the gunboats.

When Sherman's army was embarked, the transports moved out into the
Mississippi and anchored five miles above Vicksburg, where General
McClernand joined and assumed the chief command. Soon after his
arrival he determined upon a movement against Fort Hindman, on the
Arkansas River, fifty miles from its mouth. This point, better known
as Arkansas Post, commanded the approach to Little Rock, the capital
of Arkansas, but was specially obnoxious to the Union forces at this
time, as being the base from which frequent small expeditions were
sent out to embarrass their communications by the line of the
Mississippi, from which it was but fifteen miles distant in a straight
line. A few days before, the capture of the Blue Wing, a transport
loaded with valuable stores, had emphasized the necessity of
destroying a work that occupied such a menacing position upon the
flank and rear of the projected movement against Vicksburg.

The admiral detailed the three ironclads, De Kalb, Louisville, and
Cincinnati, and all the light-draught gunboats to accompany the
expedition; the gunboats, on account of their low speed, being taken
in tow by the transports. Passing by the mouth of the Arkansas, to
keep the enemy as long as possible uncertain as to the real object of
the movement, the fleet entered the White River and from the latter
passed through the cut-off which unites it with the Arkansas.

On the 9th of January the army landed about four miles below the fort.
This was a square bastioned work of three hundred feet on the side,
standing on ground elevated above the reach of floods on the left
bank, at the head of a horse-shoe bend. It had three casemates, one in
the curtain facing the approach up the bend, and one in the face of
the northeast and southeast bastions looking in the same direction. In
each bastion casemate was a IX-inch, and in that of the curtain an
VIII-inch shell-gun. These were the special antagonists of the navy,
but besides them there were four rifled and f