The Roosevelts moved back to Washington in March, 1897, and Theodore at once went to work in the office of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy in that amazing building which John Hay called "Mullett's masterpiece," where the Navy, War, and State Departments found shelter under one roof. The Secretary of the Navy was John D. Long, of Massachusetts, who had been a Congressman and Governor, was a man of cultivation and geniality, and a lawyer of high reputation. Although sixty years old, he was believed never to have made an enemy either in politics or at the Bar. Those who knew the two gentlemen wondered whether the somewhat leisurely and conservative Secretary could leash in his restless young First Assistant, with his Titanic energy and his head full of projects. No one believed that even Roosevelt could startle Governor Long out of his habitual urbanity, but every one could foresee that they might so clash in policy that either the head or the assistant would have to retire. Nothing is waste that touches the man of genius. So the two years which Roosevelt spent in writing, fifteen years before, the "History of-the Naval War of 1812," now served him to good purpose; for it gave him much information about the past of the United States Navy and it quickened his interest in the problems of the Navy as it should be at that time. The close of the Civil War in 1865 left the United States with a formidable fleet, which during the next quarter of a century deteriorated until it comprised only a collection of rotting and unserviceable ships. Then came a reaction, followed by the construction of an up-to-date fleet, and by the recognition by Congress that the United States must pursue a modern policy in naval affairs. Roosevelt had always felt the danger to the United States of maintaining a despicable or an inadequate Navy, and from the moment he entered the Department he set about pushing the construction of the unfinished vessels and of improving the quality of the personnel.