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.