The first volume opens with Jefferson Davis's farewell to the United States Senate and ends on the bloody battlefields of Antietam and Perryville, as the full, horrible scope of America's great war becomes clear. Focused on the pivotal year of 1863, the second volume of Shelby Foote’s masterful narrative history brings to life the Battle of Gettysburg and Grant’s Vicksburg campaign and covers some of the most dramatic and important moments in the Civil War. This final volume brings to life the military endgame, the surrender at Appomattox, and the tragic dénouement of the war—the assassination of President Lincoln.