The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, Volume 8

Following the 186263 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.