One event which belongs rather to biography than to history may perhaps be mentioned here in illustration of General Grant's delicacy of sentiment,--a trait in his character often overlooked. When it was arranged that the surrendered Confederates should march out, General Grant issued an order to forbid all demonstrations that might wound a conquered enemy's pride or sensitiveness. "Instruct the commands," the order read, "to be orderly and quiet as these prisoners pass, and to make no offensive remark." Thus at Vicksburg, as at Appomattox many months later, that soldier who has been accounted the least sensitive of all to considerations of sentiment, manifested a generous delicacy to which all honest minds must make reverent obeisance. During his correspondence with Pemberton concerning the surrender, Grant had declined to consider any terms that limited or imposed conditions upon the capitulation. But he had also generously written to his adversary as follows: "Men who have shown so much endurance and courage as those now in Vicksburg will always challenge the respect of an adversary, and I can assure you that you will be treated with all the respect due to prisoners of war." Grant's supplies, in his difficult position, were meager in the extreme, and it is one of the most touching incidents of the war that his men voluntarily furnished from their own haversacks the food their famished enemies needed, thus cutting off their own dinners in order that these starving foes might not longer suffer the pangs of hunger. Such incidents go far to redeem war from its curse of brutal barbarity. Five days after the fall of Vicksburg, Port Hudson was surrendered, and in Mr. Lincoln's own phrase, thenceforth the Mississippi "flowed unvexed from its source to the sea." The Confederacy was cut in twain. The end seemed to be foreordained beyond peradventure, but the determined courage and endurance of the Confederates was destined to postpone that end for nearly two years longer. The result of this campaign taken in connection with the baffling of Lee's invasion of the North at exactly the same time, in effect determined the issue of the war. From that hour forward, as we now see, it was certain that the Federal cause must ultimately triumph; but how and at what cost remained in the womb of fate.