Wisconsin,
under Major Boardman, to overtake the enemy's battery and break up
the camp, about one mile and a half in the rear of the town.
Boardman came upon the Confederates as they were retiring, and
shots were exchanged. The casualties were few, but Lieutenant
George DeKay, a gallant and attractive young officer, serving as
aide-de-camp to General Williams, received a mortal wound.

On the 29th the troops under Williams once more landed and took
post at Baton Rouge. During their absence of seventeen days, the
Confederates had improved the opportunity to remove much valuable
property that had been found stored in the arsenal on the occasion
of the first landing of the Union forces.

On his return to New Orleans Farragut received pressing orders from
the Navy Department to take Vicksburg. He therefore returned with
his fleet, reinforced by a detachment of the mortar flotilla, and
Butler once more despatched Williams, this time with an increased
force, to co-operate. Williams left Baton Rouge on the morning of
the 20th of June with a force composed of the 30th Massachusetts,
9th Connecticut, 7th Vermont, and 4th Wisconsin regiments, Nims's
2d Massachusetts battery and two sections of Everett's 6th
Massachusetts battery. This time a garrison was left to hold Baton
Rouge, consisting of the 21st Indiana and 6th Michigan regiments,
the remaining section of Everett's battery and Magee's Troop C of
the Massachusetts cavalry battalion. On the 22d of June the
transports arrived off Ellis's Cliffs, twelve miles below Natchez,
where Williams found three gunboats waiting to convoy him past the
high ground. Here he landed a detachment consisting of the 30th
Massachusetts regiment and two guns of Nims's battery to turn the
supposed position of two field-pieces said to have been planted by
the Confederates on the bluffs, while a second force, composed of
the 4th Wisconsin, 9th Connecticut, the other two sections of Nims's
battery, and the four guns of Everett's, marched directly forward
up the cliff road. An abandoned caisson or limber was all that
the troops found.

On the 24th, anticipating more serious resistance from the guns
said to be in position on the bluffs at Grand Gulf, Williams entered
Bayou Pierre with his whole force in the early morning, intending
to strike the crossing, about seventeen miles up the stream, of
the railway from Port Gibson to Grand Gulf, and thence to move
directly on the rear of the town.