Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant became commander of all federal forces in the region of Mississippi and east Louisiana in October 1862. For the next nine months, he fought for control of Vicksburg and the Mississippi River, and the Mississippi Central Railroad Campaign was the first in a series of attempts to capture the Confederate citadel. It would end in failure because of a daring raid at Holly Springs, Mississippi, made by Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn. Larry Allen McCluney Jr. examines the campaign as Grant followed the railroad through the Mississippi towns of Holly Springs, Abbeville, Water Valley, Oxford, Coffeeville, and the outskirts of Grenada where his advance was halted, forcing him to return to Holly Springs after Van Dorn's raid. The book addresses a too-little examined phase of Grant's greater Vicksburg Campaign: His initial intent to take the "Gibraltar of the Mississippi" by going through Jackson, Mississippi, on the Mississippi Central Railroad.