When Forrest sized up the situation, knowing full well the battle was won, he offered the unconditional surrender terms. The response from Bradford was provocative and unwise.

And then began a correspondence carried on from the Union side entirely in the name of Major Booth, dead for more than six hours. First Major Bradford asked, in the name of Booth, for "one hour for consultation and consideration with my officers and the officers of the gunboat." Forrest, observing a steamer "apparently crowded with troops" approaching the fort, seeing "the smoke of three other boats ascending the river," and "believing the request for an hour was to gain time for reinforcements to arrive, and that the desire to consult the officers of the gunboat was a pretext," replied with a note allowing twenty minutes.

Meanwhile the troop-laden steamers-the Liberty from above and the Olive Branch from below, as appears from subsequent Union testimony continued to approach in apparent violation of the truce, with no signal of any sort being made to them from either fort or gunboat to turn back or stand away toward the Arkansas shore.