Chickasaw Bayou

You are right, the two men did view the event differently. It emphasizes the point that when reading about an event it is a good idea to look at multiple sources when possible, read both sides and form an opinion. You can read accounts of this action and come away with completely different impressions. To your point, Sherman in his Official Report after the battle wrote : "During the night of the 27th the ground was reconnoitered ...Immediately in our front was a bayou passable only at two points-on a narrow levee and on a sand bar which was perfectly commanded by the enemy's sharpshooters....Behind this was an irregular strip of bench or table land, on which was constructed a series of rifle-pits and batteries, and behind that a high, abrupt range of hills, whose scarred sides were marked all the way up with rifle-trenches, and the crowns of the practical hills presented heavy batteries."

Yet Lee in his Official Report wrote "Rifle-pits were hurriedly thrown up at the mound and at the bayou, and timber felled across the lake for an abatis." Then Lee in a speech in 1894 at a memorial dedication at Vicksburg said "This attack was signally repulsed by one Confederate brigade and eight light guns, with a loss to Sherman of 1,439 killed, wounded and missing, and seven stands of colors. This single trial decided the second attempt, as Sherman imagined he saw the bluff's fortifications, where none existed, but really only a few rifle pits hurriedly thrown up by the troops after arrival on the ground."

Had Sherman been alive at the time of that speech he probably would have been furious.