Accounts by George B. McClellan and Abraham Lincoln provide a classroom source-comparison exercise. McClellan remembers presidential praise, while Lincoln remembers pressing a reluctant commander to move. Both versions can arise from the same conversation if McClellan retained the compliment and Lincoln regarded it only as a preface to an instruction. The comparison shows why historians examine participants' purposes and perceptions instead of treating a firsthand account as a neutral record.
Notable Point · 37:29-39:27
Lincoln and McClellan remembered the same meeting differently
Contrasting accounts of one meeting show how perspective and selective attention can make primary sources describe apparently different events.