William Buel Franklin 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 battles in the Eastern Theater of the Civil War. He also distinguished himself as a civil engineer before and after the war.
Major General William B. Franklin
William B. Franklin in 1861, by Alfred Waud
The Army of the Potomac was the primary field army of the Union Army in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War. It was created in July 1861 shortly after the First Battle of Bull Run and was disbanded in June 1865 following the surrender of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in April.
Generals of the Army of the Potomac at Culpeper, Virginia in September 1863, including (from left to right): Gouverneur K. Warren, William H. French, George G. Meade, Henry J. Hunt, Andrew A. Humphreys, and George Sykes
The Army of the Potomac – Our Outlying Picket in the Woods, an illustration of the Army of the Potomac by Winslow Homer published in Harper's Weekly on June 7, 1862
Grand Review of the Army of the Potomac, an October 1863 illustration by Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly
An illustration of the Army of the Potomac celebrating Saint Patrick's Day with a steeplechase race among the Irish Brigade, drawn by Edwin Forbes on March 17, 1863
