While Gettysburg is better known, Vicksburg was the more important battle from a strategic point of view according to the author, Winston Groom. Here he details the struggle by the Union to gain control of the Mississippi River valley and to divide the Confederacy in two. We see Grant's determination, the feistiness of William Tecumseh Sherman, and the pride and intransigence of Confederate leaders from Jefferson Davis and General Joseph E. Johnston to General John C. Pemberton, the Rebel who commanded at Vicksburg and took the blame for losing.