It should be explained that Grant had not come up to join in the demonstration against Vicksburg because, on December 20th one of his subordinates had in a most disgraceful manner surrendered Holly Springs, with its immense store of supplies, to the Rebels. The failure of Sherman's expedition caused a great outcry against him throughout the country, and he was charged with incapacity, how unjustly the simple narrative fully demonstrates. Long afterward, when Vicksburg had finally been taken, Grant officially declared: "General Sherman's arrangement, as commander of troops in the attack on Chickasaw Bluffs, was admirable. Seeing the ground from the opposite side of the attack afterwards, I saw the impossibility of making it successful." Sherman's losses in the attack were 175 killed, 930 wounded, and 743 prisoners. The Rebel losses were 63 killed, 134 wounded, and 10 prisoners. As a result of this miscarriage, and of the miserable surrender at Holly Springs, Pemberton was left free, with his powerful army, to fall back and occupy Vicksburg, and thus to hold it for a long time against the combined attacks of the Union Army and Navy. Sherman's own estimate of his work, in his farewell orders to his troops, must be regarded as entirely just, and it is amply corroborated by the testimony of Grant and Porter. "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 This gave the enemy time to remove forces to effectually checkmate further progress, and the expedition was withdrawn when within a few hundred yards of free and open navigation to the Yazoo."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."