"Confederate President Jefferson Davis had a great designs for the Mississippi Valley. Confederate Major General Richard Taylor knew that the only long-term solution to protecting the twin river citadels at Vicksburg and Port Hudson was an active offensive. As Rebel plans matured, time grew short for Union efforts to capture the great river, and officers suggested that the key to victory might be an indirect approach west of the Mississippi, working from enclaves captured the previous fall. "The Teche county [sic] was to the war in Louisiana what the Shenandoah Valley was to the war in Virginia," Captain John William De Forest of the 12th Connecticut Infantry noted. "It was sort of a back alley, parallel to the main street wherein the heavy fighting must go on." In the spring of 1863, the opening act of the final scene of the Mississippi Valley campaign played out in southwestern Louisiana among the bayous and swamps of the massive Atchafalaya Basin" --Dust jacket flap.