"Tim Smith unquestionably provides us with the best researched and most closely detailed account yet published of a complex series of events." - Civil War Books and Authors "In producing the fifth and final installment of his critically acclaimed study of the Vicksburg campaign Tim Smith saves his best work for last. Wielding his talented pen, the author chronicles the operational phase of the campaign during which Ulysses S. Grant and his Union Army of the Tennessee fought five battles in seventeen days as they drove deep into the interior of Mississippi and to the gates of Vicksburg. The insights and analysis Smith provides of the generalship of Grant and his opponent John C. Pemberton during this crucial phase of the campaign are spot-on and provide the reader with a comprehensive understanding of the complexities of these operations and the artistry of war. But it is the experiences of the common soldier that will captivate the reader, and here Smith is at his finest. More so than in his previous works he mines an impressive array of letters, diaries, and memoirs--scores of which are used here for the first time.

With the skill of an artist, Smith weaves the words of the soldiers themselves to present a narrative that draws the reader into the midst of the long columns on the dusty march and to feel the confidence and determination of one army and the indecision that plagued the other. This volume--indeed the entire study--has earned a place alongside Bearss and Grabau in the pantheon of Vicksburg titles." - Terrence J. Winschel, historian (ret.), Vicksburg National Military Park, and author of Triumph & Defeat: The Vicksburg Campaign, Vols. 1-2.