Up to this time General Halleck, who was acting as adjutant general, though no longer in command, had continued in annoying ways to interfere with Grant's orders and proceedings. A dispatch from Mr. Lincoln warned Grant that certain of his orders would not be carried out unless he, Grant, should personally see to their execution. This gave Grant his opportunity, once for all, to teach Halleck the bitter lesson that it was now the Galena clerk who had the right to command. Grant went to Washington and so far asserted himself that Halleck sent him a message of complete submission, and thereafter executed the orders of the commanding general, instead of criticizing them and interfering with them. Grant's instructions to Sheridan were to put himself south of the Confederates, and to follow them to the death wherever they might go. Having 30,000 men with whom to chase 8,000 Sheridan's task in the execution of this order was not a difficult one. Early lay at this time just south of the Potomac, a little way above Harper's Ferry, and was drawing his supplies from Maryland by cavalry operations in that quarter. Sheridan promptly pushed southward toward Winchester and Early retired to that point to await reinforcements from Lee. Early retreated as far as Fisher's Hill, east of Winchester, and there took up a strong position, offering battle to his adversary while waiting to be reinforced. There Sheridan attacked Early on the twenty-first of August and was beaten off by the Confederates with a loss of two or three hundred men. Sheridan thereupon retired to Hall Town, destroying as he went "everything eatable." Then occurred one of the odd situations of the war. For three or four weeks, Early with less than 8,000 men was practically besieging Sheridan with more than 30,000, and in the meantime keeping Washington in a condition of chronic fright by threatening raids into Maryland, West Virginia and Pennsylvania, by breaking up the Baltimore and Ohio railroad and the Chesapeake and Ohio canal, and in other ways behaving himself precisely as he might have done had his force been four times that of Sheridan's, instead of being, as it was in fact, one fourth as great. Why Sheridan with his enormously superior force did not at this time fall upon Early and crush him must always be a puzzling question to the historian and the military critic. Whatever the explanation may be, the fact is that during all these weeks Sheridan was standing at bay in the hope that Grant's operations before Petersburg might compel Lee to withdraw Early and his small force from the Valley. So far from driving Early out of that region Sheridan stood upon the defensive in order that Early might not drive him out instead.