Battles & Leaders of the Civil War: General William B. Franklin’s Notes of the Maryland Campaign

William Buel Franklin (February 27, 1823 – March 8, 1903) was a career United States Army officer and a Union Army general in the American Civil War. He rose to the rank of a corps commander in the Army of the Potomac, fighting in several notable early battles in the Eastern Theater. Franklin was promoted to brigadier general of volunteers but quickly rose from brigade to corps command in the Army of the Potomac, seeing action in the Peninsula Campaign, the Battle of Antietam, and the Battle of Fredericksburg. At Antietam, his VI Corps was in reserve and he tried in vain to convince Maj. Gen. Edwin V. Sumner to allow his corps to exploit a weakened position in the Confederate center.

Franklin’s notes of the Maryland Campaign were included as part of the well known Battles & Leaders of the Civil War Series, offering a primary account of the events leading up to the Battle of Antietam and including some of the correspondence among the Lincoln Administration’s top officials in the War Department.