Hill’s Plantation

Hill’s Plantation. Steele’s Bayou Expedition. Rear Admiral David D. Porter’s flotilla arrived here late in the afternoon of March 16, 1863, after working all day to clear overhanging branches and uproot huge cypress trees in the 3 ½ miles from Steele’s Bayou though Black Bayou to Deer Creek. The Union sailors disembarked and foraged the area for chickens, hams, eggs, butter, and quilts. That night Porter wrote Major General Ulysses S. Grant asking for 3,000 soldiers to prevent the enemy from “putting us in a pretty tight place,” in response to which Major General William T. Sherman was directed to shuttle his troops from Muddy Bayou – at Eagle Bend on the Mississippi River, to Hill’s., On the morning of March 17, as Sherman’s men fortified the encampment at Hill’s Porter’s vessels steamed north on Deer Creek toward Rolling Fork where the fleet soon ran into trouble. At 3 a.m. on March 21, Sherman received a distress message from Porter, whose fleet was being attacked by Confederates just south of Rolling Fork. Sherman sent Colonel Biles Smith with 800 soldiers on a forced march up the east bank of Deer Creek to assist Porter. Late that night, using candles in the darkness, Sherman guided the remainder of Giles Smith’s brigade and the four regiments of Colonel T. K. Smith’s brigade to Hill’s from a point on Black Bayou 1 ½ miles west of here. At 8 a.m. on March 22, Sherman led these men on a march up Deer Creek to assist Porter and helped save the fleet., (captions) , (top right) Major General William T. Sherman, (bottom left) It was here that Admiral Porter went to great lengths to maneuver his stern-wheeled boats to make a left turn from the narrow channel of Black Bayou into Deer Creek. This required very slow, tedious right and left pulling from the stern and bow, all the while the vessel is anchored to trees alternately from the left bank to the right bank so that the current would not move the boat downstream. Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War