On February 19 and 20, the members of Battery E were witnesses to the burning of Hopefield, Arkansas, a small town across the river whose citizens had taken the Unionist Loyalty oath, but were secretly assisting local Confederate guerrillas. After several Federal soldiers had been murdered in or near the town, four companies of Northern troops attacked Hopefield and burnt the entire city to the ground. Though Battery E did not actively participate in this event, Rice described it as a "long-merited punishment." Returning to Memphis on March 14 of that same year, they took steamboats to Duckport, Louisiana, a (now vanished) landing on the Mississippi River a few miles northwest of Vicksburg, Mississippi. Here, they rejoined the rest of Sherman's XV Corps, one of five corps assigned to Ulysses S. Grant's Army of the Tennessee that was then preparing to embark on the famed Vicksburg Campaign.