 One of the reasons that McClellan 's reputation has suffered is because of his own memoirs . Historian Allan Nevins wrote , " Students of history must always be grateful McClellan so frankly exposed his own weaknesses in this posthumous book . " Doris Kearns Goodwin claims that a review of his personal correspondence during the war reveals a tendency for self @-@ aggrandizement and unwarranted self @-@ congratulation . His original draft was completed in 1881 , but the only copy was destroyed by fire . He began to write another draft of what would be published posthumously , in 1887 , as McClellan 's Own Story . However , he died before it was half completed and his literary executor , William C. Prime , editor of the pro @-@ McClellan New York Journal of Commerce , included excerpts from some 250 of McClellan 's wartime letters to his wife , in which it had been his habit to reveal his innermost feelings and opinions in unbridled fashion . 
