Following the 1862–63 winter of dis­content, Grant suddenly launched a brilliant campaign against Vicksburg which ultimately bisected the Confeder­acy. 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 fol­lowed by long months of false starts and apparent inactivity in the bayou country north of the city and across the Mis­sissippi River in Louisiana, suddenly reached a quick and dramatic conclu­sion, as the events in this volume show.

John Y. Simon is Director of the Ulysses S. Grant Associa­tion and Professor of History at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.