Lincoln and McClellan heard the same meeting differently

Abraham Lincoln and George B. McClellan left very different impressions of the same meeting. Lincoln's account presents the visit as an effort to make McClellan move and put his plans into action. McClellan instead wrote as though the president had come chiefly to praise his brilliance. Lincoln may have wrapped the directive in flattering language because McClellan's ego was the easiest way to motivate him. Their conflicting recollections offer a compact lesson in civil-military communication and in comparing self-interested primary accounts.