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Washington. Despite his many trips to see McClellan at the front, how could Lincoln know for sure what the situations in the field or the problems that may have been facing McClellan were like? Lincoln and McClellan were excellent first-hand sources to describe the events they participated in. However, they are not reliable sources to analyze, critique, or evaluate events that they themselves took part in. They simply ca not be objective. Everyone will try and present himself or herself in the best light when they know that history is watching. But nevertheless, Williams continually uses letters and messages written by them and other unionists to support his arguments. He can not do that and still claim to have a fair and unbiased account of history.

A fourth point to consider when reading Lincoln and his Generals is the time period in which it was written. Williams wrote Lincoln and his Generals in 1952. The post-World War II era in the United States of America, before the 1960s, was, for the most part, an extremely conservative society. The second Great War had just been won and the Korean War was being fought. Patriotism and nationalistic feeling was at an all time high in the United States.

Thriving in this political climate were traditionalist historians. These types of historians believed in the idea of America as the best of all civilizations. All Americans were the good guys and any opinion or publication showing Americans as anything less was wrong. People like Eisenhower, MacArthur, Washington, Grant, and Lincoln were all, without question, American heroes. Is it any wonder, then, why Williams would write such a book describing Lincoln as the greatest war president in American history? Of course not, everyone else would have been saying the exact same thing. As far as Williams is concerned the Union Army and President Lincoln were the American "good guys" while the South was just a rebellious, anti-Union, and therefor anti-American, territory. It is naive to think that the political mood of a time would have no affect on an author when writing about a historical event. That is not to say that traditional historians are wrong, Williams and the rest of the traditionalists could be totally correct. But, had the book been written twenty years later, in and around the Vietnam War, it could have had a completely different tone. Instead, Lincoln and his generals may have been described as tools of an oppressive government, who were forcing their will on a

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