Following the 1862-63 winter of dis-content, Grant suddenly launched a brilliant campaign against Vicksburg which ultimately bisected the Confeder-acy. A long campaign, which had begun in November 1862, with an advance from Tennessee down the Mississippi Central Railroad and a premature assault on Vicksburg in December by troops under Sherman, and which had been fol-lowed by long months of false starts and apparent inactivity in the bayou country north of the city and across the Mis-sissippi River in Louisiana, suddenly reached a quick and dramatic conclu-sion, as the events in this volume show.