On the 4th of January, 1863, our fleet of transports was collected at Milliken’s Bend, about ten miles above the mouth of the Yazoo, Admiral Porter remaining with his gunboats at the Yazoo.  General John A. McClernand was in chief command, General George W. Morgan commanded the First Corps and I the Second Corps of the Army of the Mississippi.

I had learned that a small steamboat, the Blue Wing, with a mail, towing coal-barges and loaded with ammunition, had left Memphis for the Yazoo, about the 20th of December, had been captured by a rebel boat which had come out of the Arkansas River, and had been carried up that river to Fort Hind.

We had reports from this fort, usually called the “Post of Arkansas,” about forty miles above the mouth, that it was held by about five thousand rebels, was an inclosed work, commanding the passage of the river, but supposed to be easy of capture from the rear.  At that time I don’t think General McClernand had any definite views or plays of action.  If so, he did not impart them to me.  He spoke, in general terms of opening the navigation of the Mississippi, “cutting his way to the sea,” etc., etc., but the modus operandi was not so clear.  Knowing full well that we could not carry on operations against Vicksburg as long as the rebels held the Post of Arkansas, whence to attack our boats coming and going without convoy, I visited him on his boat, the Tigress, took with me a boy who had been on the Blue Wing, and had escaped, and asked leave to go up the Arkansas, to clear out the Post.  He made various objections, but consented to go with me to see Admiral Porter about it.  We got up steam in the Forest Queen, during the night of January 4th, stopped at the Tigress, took General McClernand on board, and proceeded down the river by night to the admiral’s boat, the Black Hawk, lying in the mouth of the Yazoo.  It must have been near midnight, and Admiral Porter was in deshabille.  We were seated in his cabin and I explained my views about Arkansas Post, and asked his cooperation.  He said that he was short of coal, and could not use wood in his iron-clad boats.  Of these I asked for two, to be commanded by Captain Shirk or Phelps, or some officer of my acquaintance.  At that moment, poor Gwin lay on his bed, in a state-room close by, dying from the effect of the cannon shot received at Haines’s Bluff, as before described.  Porter’s manner to McClernand was so curt that I invited him out into a forward-cabin where he had his charts, and asked him what he meant by it.  He said that “he did not like him;” that in Washington, before coming West, he had been introduced to him by President Lincoln, and he had taken a strong prejudice against him.  I begged him, for the sake of harmony, to waive that, which he promised to do.  Returning to the cabin, the conversation was resumed, and, on our offering to tow his gunboats up the river to save coal, and on renewing the request