The total result of this struggle was that Grant held and continued thereafter to hold a part of the railroad which led south from Petersburg, by way of Weldon, and upon which Lee was compelled to depend in a considerable degree for communication and supplies. But with that vigor and resourcefulness which had come to mark the operations of the armies on both sides, Lee promptly opened a wagon route thirty miles long and well defended, over which as a bridge to the gap he was able for months afterwards to carry all supplies and reinforcements that could be brought to him from the south. In the meanwhile there was continuous battling all along the Richmond and Petersburg lines, which covered a space of more than thirty miles. The sharpshooting was incessant, the bombardment scarcely less so. But Grant was not yet ready to make another determined assault upon Lee's works, or in any other way to bring on a battle in earnest. The defeat and driving away of Hunter from the Valley was a painful miscarriage of the plans with which the lieutenant general had hoped to conduct the campaign. So long as Early should remain in the Valley it was obvious that continual raids upon Washington were not only possible but probable, and that these raids or even the possibility of them must seriously impair Grant's strength at Petersburg. Accordingly, Grant decided that his first care now must be to regain possession of the valley of Virginia, and to hold that region irresistibly against Confederate invasion. To accomplish this he sent for General Sheridan and placed under his command a force of 30,000 men, or nearly four times as many as those with which Early could oppose him. With a force so overwhelming, Sheridan was ordered completely to clear the valley of Confederate troops, to cut off all supplies that might come from that fertile region for the support of Lee's army, and permanently to render that pathway toward the north a no-thoroughfare to the Confederates. Grant's purpose looked to a campaign of utter and complete destruction. In his orders to Sheridan he said, "In pushing up the Shenandoah Valley, where it is expected you will have to go first or last, it is desirable that nothing should be left to invite the enemy to return. Take all provisions, forage and stock wanted for the use of your command. Such as cannot be consumed destroy. It is not desirable that the buildings should be destroyed--they should rather be protected; but the people should be informed that so long as an army can subsist among them recurrences of these raids must be expected; and we are determined to stop them at all hazards."