Battle
Union boats began landing troops near Arkansas Post in the evening of January 9 and the troops started up river towards Fort Hindman. Sherman's corps overran the Confederate trenches, and the enemy retreated to the protection of the fort and adjacent rifle-pits. Flag Officer David D. Porter, on January 10, moved his fleet towards Fort Hindman and bombarded it, withdrawing at dusk. Union artillery fired on the fort from positions across the river on January 11, effectively silencing most of the Confederate guns in the fort, and the infantry moved into position for an attack. Union ironclads commenced shelling the fort and Porter's fleet passed it to cut off any retreat. As a result of this envelopment and the attack by McClernand's troops, the Confederate command surrendered in the afternoon, despite orders to Brig. Gen. Churchill to defend the fort at all costs.
Read more about this topic: Battle Of Fort Hindman
Famous quotes containing the word battle:
“How good bad music and bad reasons sound when we are marching into battle against an enemy.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“That civilisation may not sink,
Its great battle lost,”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“What a battle a man must fight everywhere to maintain his standing army of thoughts, and march with them in orderly array through the always hostile country! How many enemies there are to sane thinking! Every soldier has succumbed to them before he enlists for those other battles.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)