There is an excellant article in the latest issues of the Sons of Confederate Veterans Magazine "The Confederate Veteran" of the personal account of Sargeant Robt. L. Clark of Co "F" of the 6th Texas Infantry.

One of the points he made was that the union soldier reported 1800 casualities while being astonished at the lack of Casualities of the Confederates less than 180.

As for the question; could Arkansas Post have held out? That is a interesting subject for some discussion. Had their orders not been confused Walker's Texas Division would have arrived in time to be a part of the action. Still they were less than 24 hour away at the time of the surrender. Most of the 35,000 Union Troops were still on the transports at that time and Walker would have been able to have shelled those boats from the South side of the Arkansas River at will with his mobile batterys. Add to that the re-enforcements from Camps Nelson and Camp Bayou Meto were also on the way coming up behind those Union Troops that were already landed and placing them between the fortifications of Arkansas Post and the reenforcemnets from Camp Nelson, would have placed the Union Commander in a position that I would not have wanted to be in and could have spelled disaster for that expedition. All of that stopped when news of the surrender reached those Units.

Most of the Union efforts had been directed toward reduction of the Forts fortifications for the protection of the transport fleet and the ground was such that the Union forces would have had difficulty in using their entire infantry forces. So, I believe that if only Walker's command had arrived it would have made a different tale.