This account of Haines Bluff... Haines Bluff was important in suppling Grants army...
On the 18th of May Grant's Army marched on Vicksburg. Sherman moved to the north with his Corps and easily secured the high ground that he had earlier tried to capture in a joint operation with the Navy. This time Sherman occupied the ground virtually unopposed because Porter had preceded him. I dispatched Colonel Swan, of the Fourth Iowa Cavalry, to Haines' Bluff, to capture the battery from the rear, and he afterward reported that he found it abandoned...Colonel 44 Swan saw one of our gunboats lying about two miles below in the Yazoo, to which he signaled. Joint operations were about to begin again in earnest. As Porter reported: On the morning of the 15th I came over to the Yazoo River to be ready to cooperate with General Grant...On the 18th , at meridian, firing was heard in the rear of Vicksburg, which assured me that General Grant was approaching the city. The cannonading was kept up furiously for some time, when, by the aid of glasses, I discovered a company of our artillery advancing, taking position, and driving the rebels before them. I immediately dispatched the De Kalb,...Choctaw,...Linden, Romeo, Petrel, and Forest Rose,...up the Yazoo, to open communication in that way with Generals Grant and Sherman.
This I succeeded in doing and in three hours received letters from Generals Grant, Sherman, and Steele, informing me of their vast successes and asking me to send up provisions, which was at once done. In the meantime Lieutenant Commander walker, in the De Kalb pushed on to Haines' Bluff, which the enemy commenced evacuating the day before, and a party remained behind in hopes of taking away or destroying the large amount of ammunition on hand. When they saw the gunboats they ran and left everything in good [53 order- guns, forts, tents, and equipage of all kinds, which fell into our hands. Incidentally, Army troops were still serving onboard the gunboats and several on the U.S.S. Linden were injured during the action. "We had two captains of guns, soldiers belonging to the Fifty-eighth Ohio Regiment, dangerously wounded."
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