Adam Badeau, Military history of Ulysses S. Grant from April 1861 to April 1865. Volume 1

[278] charge completely demoralized the rebels, already disheartened by the great defeat of the day before. They fled at once to the crossing, abandoning their guns without a struggle. The panic spread to the troops on the western bank, who set fire to the bridge before half of those on the eastern side had crossed. Then began a wild struggle to reach the river; some few rebels succeeded in swimming across, among them General Green, but many were drowned. No regard for rank was observed; officers and men made up one mass of fugitives. Some were too timid to expose themselves to the fire of the pursuing enemy, and remained in the trenches to surrender. One entire brigade was thus surrounded and captured. Grant's loss in this engagement was twenty-nine killed and two hundred and forty-two wounded. Seventeen hundred and fifty-one prisoners fell into his hands, and eighteen cannon and five stands of colors were also trophies of this brilliant movement. The number of killed and wounded among the rebels is not known; it was, however, small.

Without any delay, or any further attempt to resist the crossing of the national troops, Pemberton now started at once for Vicksburg, with his depressed and discomfited followers. Stragglers in large numbers had already abandoned his army, whose spirit seemed absolutely destroyed; he was ignorant of the fate of Loring's division, and was alarmed lest Grant, by a flank movement on Bridgeport or Baldwin, might even reach Vicksburg before him. The rapidity and strangeness of the latter's manoeuvres had evidently affected the imagination of his antagonist, for he said: ‘The enemy, by a flank movement on my left at Bridgeport, and on my right by Baldwin's or other ’