It was now September, 1862, and what she had to tell him was one of the most dramatic stories that the history of our American war has to relate. McClellan had proved himself to be a great organiser and a masterful engineer, and he had at last tried to prove himself to be also a great general. He had so perfectly fortified the city of Washington that a brigade or a division or two might easily hold it against the most determined hosts. He had organised the "regiments cowering upon the Potomac," and the scores of other regiments that had come pouring into the capital, into one of the finest armies that had ever taken the field in any country in the world. He had multiplied his artillery, and swelled his cavalry force to proportions that rendered it numerically superior to Stuart's "Mamelukes." He had so perfected his supply departments--quartermaster's, commissary's, medical, and ordnance--that their work was accomplished with the precision, the certainty, and the smoothness of well-ordered machinery. He had brought under his immediate command a perfectly organised army, numbering nearly or quite two hundred thousand men.[1] The Confederates had in Virginia about one-fourth that number available for the defence of Richmond. Nor could this army of defence be reinforced from other parts of the South, for during the long waiting-time in Virginia, events of the most vital importance had been occurring at the West. Chief of these in importance, though the government at Washington was slow to recognise the fact, was the discovery there of a really capable commander--General Grant. He had captured Forts Henry and Donelson, thus gaining control of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, breaking the Confederate line of defence, and pushing the Southern armies completely out of Kentucky, and almost out of Tennessee. He was preparing, when McClellan moved, to complete that part of his work by fighting the tremendous battle of Shiloh. [Footnote 1: Rossiter Johnson, in his "History of the War of Secession," says that 121,000 were sent to Fortress Monroe and seventy thousand left at Washington, besides McDowell's corps and Bleuker's division.] Thus the Confederates could not afford to draw so much as a single regiment or battery from that field for the strengthening of Johnston's force in Virginia. Finally, early in March, Johnston had withdrawn from Centreville and Manassas to the immediate neighbourhood of Richmond.