For the work immediately in hand, this was probably the best selection that could have been made. Washington needed to be fortified, and he was a master of engineering; both the army that had just been defeated, and the new recruits that were pouring in, needed organization, and he proved preëminent as an organizer. Three months after he took command of fifty thousand uniformed men at the capital, he had an army of more than one hundred thousand, well organized in regiments, brigades, and divisions, with the proper proportion of artillery, with quartermaster and commissary departments going like clockwork, and the whole fairly drilled and disciplined. Everybody looked on with admiration, and the public impatience that had precipitated the disastrous "On to Richmond" movement was now replaced by a marvellous patience. The summer and autumn months went by, and no movement was made; but McClellan, in taking command, had promised that the war should be "short, sharp, and decisive," and the people thought, if they only allowed him time enough to make thorough preparation, his great army would at length swoop down upon the Confederate capital and finish everything at one blow. At length, however, they began to grow weary of the daily telegram, "All quiet along the Potomac," and the monotonously repeated information that "General McClellan rode out to Fairfax Court-House and back this morning." The Confederacy was daily growing stronger; the Potomac was being closed to navigation by the erection of hostile batteries on its southern bank; the enemy's flag was flying within sight from the capital, and the question of foreign interference was becoming exceedingly grave. On the 1st of November General Scott, then seventy-five years of age, retired, and McClellan succeeded him as General-in-Chief of all the armies.