General Grant joined me there, and we sat on a log, looking at the passage of the troops by the light of those fires; the bridge swayed to and fro under the passing feet, and made a fine war-picture.

At daybreak we moved on, ascending the ridge, and by 10 a.m.the head of my column, long drawn out, reached the Benton road, and gave us command of the peninsula between the Yazoo and Big Black.

I dispatched Colonel Swan, of the Fourth Iowa Cavalry, to Haines's Bluff, to capture that battery from the rear, and he afterward reported that he found it abandoned, its garrison having hastily retreated into Vicksburg, leaving their guns partially disabled, a magazine full of ammunition, and a hospital full of wounded and sick men.

Colonel Swan saw one of our gunboats lying about two miles below in the Yazoo, to which he signaled.

She steamed up, and to its commander the cavalry turned over the battery at Haines's Bluff, and rejoined me in front of Vicksburg.