 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.Robert E. Lee, on being asked (by his cousin, and recorded by his son) who was the ablest general on the Union side during the late war, replied emphatically