Major General William B. Franklin: The Archetype of the Peacetime Professional Who Fails in War

Everything the pre-war and peacetime Army valued, Franklin possessed in abundance. Today's Army (and military) is similar. We have an out of date personnel management system.

In my decades of research and advocacy for reforming the U.S. Army’s officer personnel system—spanning books like Path to Victory: America’s Army and the Revolution in Human Affairs (2002), Raising the Bar (2006), and Manning the Future Legions (2008), as well as ongoing analyses in my Substack writings through 2025—no historical case better exemplifies the persistent dysfunction than that of Major General William Buell Franklin. Franklin embodies what reformers, including myself, have long identified as the “good peacetime officer, bad wartime commander” syndrome: individuals who excel in administration and engineering but falter under the chaos of combat.

Despite incremental talent management reforms initiated under the Army’s People Strategy and the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act—such as the Army Talent Alignment Process (ATAP), Assignment Interactive Module (AIM 2.0), Battalion Commander Assessment Programs, and recent expansions like Talent-Based Branching for cadets (implemented for FY 2026) and revamped direct commissioning for specialized skills in 2025—core elements of the centralized, industrial-age officer management system rooted in the Officer Personnel Act of 1947 and Defense Officer Personnel Act of 1980 (DOPMA) remain largely unchanged.

As I noted in my December 2025 Substack post on the Marine Corps’ radical 1989-1990 campaign plan and its parallels today, the military continues to punish genuine reformers in real time while slowly adopting (or claiming) their ideas decades later, perpetuating a system that prioritizes box-checking over adaptive leadership and mission command.

Franklin graduated first in his West Point class of 1843, distinguished himself as a brilliant engineer overseeing major Washington, D.C. projects, earned brevet promotions for gallantry in the Mexican-American War (including at Buena Vista), and rose rapidly as a close protégé of George B. McClellan due to his intellect and administrative prowess.

Yet in independent command during the Civil War, he repeatedly demonstrated excessive caution and indecision amid friction and ambiguity: failing to aggressively relieve Harpers Ferry in September 1862 (contributing to the largest Union surrender of the war), hesitating to exploit opportunities at Antietam, and launching limited, indecisive attacks at Fredericksburg in December 1862 that failed to break Confederate lines despite potential vulnerabilities.

Historians and contemporaries, including the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, criticized these shortcomings, leading to his removal from command in 1863. Nevertheless, the pre-reform personnel system—favoring seniority, connections, and peacetime metrics—had elevated him to corps command anyway. This pattern, tragic in its predictability, remains a cautionary lesson as the Army in 2025 still grapples with fully decentralizing talent management to reward wartime adaptability over bureaucratic excellence.

The Profile of Institutional Success

• West Point class valedictorian

• Corps of Engineers (the “smart kids” branch)

• Served as McClellan’s Adjutant General in 1861 and then division and corps commander

• Politically well-connected (a Democrat in a Republican-dominated army, yet repeatedly saved by patronage)

• Superb staff officer, meticulous planner, outstanding trainer

Everything the pre-war and peacetime Army valued, Franklin possessed in abundance. In the language of today’s Officer Evaluation Report (OER) culture, he was a consistent “Most Qualified/Top 1%” performer in garrison. The system could not imagine that these traits did not translate to the battlefield.

The Battlefield Record: Risk Aversion Under Fire

1. Harper’s Ferry - 14-16 September 1862 (VI Corps, Army of the Potomac) On September 13, 1862, McClellan got Lee’s Special Orders No. 191—the “Lost Orders”—showing Lee had split his army, with Jackson off capturing Harpers Ferry. McClellan sent Franklin’s VI Corps (bolstered by Couch’s division, about 19,000–20,000 men) through Crampton’s Gap to hit McLaws’s rear on Maryland Heights and relieve Colonel Miles’s garrison.

But McClellan waited until dawn on the 14th to start Franklin moving—hours lost right there. Franklin reached Burkittsville by midday but sat for hours before attacking the gap. Late that afternoon, his corps easily brushed aside Cobb’s thin defense (1,200–2,000 men) at Crampton’s Gap. Union casualties were light (533), the gap was ours by evening, and Pleasant Valley lay open—just six miles from Harpers Ferry.

The Rebels had bought precious hours. By the time Franklin reformed in the valley after 6:00 p.m., it was too dark to push on against McLaws. Overnight, McLaws pulled back some troops, threw up a line, and bluffed strength. Franklin, convinced the enemy outnumbered him nearly two-to-one, called any attack “suicidal” and stayed put. That hesitation let Jackson finish encircling and pounding Harpers Ferry. The garrison surrendered the morning of September 15—hours before relief could possibly arrive. (McClellan’s couriers never even got through to Miles.)

Another missed chance, born of caution over boldness.

2. Fredericksburg – 13 December 1862 (Left Grand Division, Army of the Potomac)
Franklin commanded fully half of Burnside’s army—approximately 60,000 men—with orders to attack Stonewall Jackson’s corps on the Confederate right. Jackson had roughly 35,000, but his line south of Hamilton’s Crossing was thinly held in places and vulnerable to a determined assault.

Franklin had overwhelming combat power. Meade’s division alone, supported by Doubleday and Gibbon, could put close to 18,000 rifles into the fight. Yet Franklin, paralyzed by McClellan-style caution and convinced the enemy was stronger than intelligence indicated, fed the battle in driblets. He authorized Meade only one division in the initial assault and refused to reinforce success when Meade momentarily pierced Jackson’s line at Prospect Hill. Total Federal troops seriously engaged: barely 8,000 against Jackson’s 35,000. The opportunity was lost by noon. Franklin spent the rest of the day doing…nothing aggressive. Burnside’s frontal attacks against Marye’s Heights are rightly remembered as slaughter, but the real sin was Franklin’s refusal to commit his massively superior wing when victory was within reach.

3. Sabine Cross Roads / Pleasant Grove – 8 April 1864 (Red River Campaign)
Relegated to corps command under Nathaniel Banks after Lincoln relieved him from the Army of the Potomac, Franklin again demonstrated the same fatal flaw. On a narrow road bounded by dense pine forest, his leading division (Emory’s) was ambushed by Dick Taylor’s Confederates. Instead of immediately pushing forward his following divisions (roughly 12,000 fresh troops) to smash Taylor’s 8,800 before they could concentrate, Franklin panicked. He ordered a withdrawal, ceding the initiative and turning a tactical surprise into a running fight. At Pleasant Grove the next day he finally stood, but only after surrendering miles of ground and most of the army’s wagon train. Banks’s campaign collapsed shortly thereafter.

In both cases the common thread is clear: Franklin could plan brilliantly on paper, but when the enemy began shooting back and information became contradictory, he defaulted to extreme risk aversion. He always assumed the enemy was stronger than he actually was and refused to accept the uncertainty that is the very essence of war.

Why Did the System Keep Bringing Him Back?

This is the part that should infuriate every serving officer and frighten every citizen.

1. Senior Sponsor Protection
   George B. McClellan never stopped defending his protégé. Even after Franklin’s dismal performance on the Peninsula and at Fredericksburg, McClellan wrote letters insisting Franklin was the best man in the army.

2. Political Utility
   As a prominent War Democrat, Franklin was useful to Lincoln in keeping Democratic generals in the fold. Patronage networks mattered more than results.

3. The Engineer Mindset and the Peacetime Evaluation System
   The 19th-century Army rewarded precision, linear thinking, and error avoidance—the very qualities that crush initiative in war. Franklin excelled at the metrics the system measured: digging fortifications, building bridges, writing clear orders, looking good on horseback. Battlefield boldness and willingness to accept controlled risk were not only unmeasured—they were punished when they led to setbacks.

4. Absence of Real Accountability
   After Fredericksburg, Franklin was simply removed from command and sent to administrative posts. After the Red River disaster, he was again shuffled off, never court-martialed, never professionally ruined. The Army had no mechanism to identify, much less purge, officers who were courageous in peace but timid in war.

The Enduring Lesson

William B. Franklin is not an anomaly; he is the prototype. The U.S. military has repeated this mistake from 1861 to 2025: promoting technically competent, risk-averse, senior-sponsored officers who shine in the Pentagon or on training bases but fold when real enemies shoot back. We did it with the interwar generals who botched North Africa and the Philippines in 1941–42. We did it with some of the three- and four-star “managers” who micromanaged Iraq and Afghanistan into strategic stalemate.

Until we reform the personnel system—until we deliberately screen for demonstrated moral courage under ambiguity, until we reward leaders who take prudent risk and learn from failure instead of punishing them, until we break the grip of senior sponsorship and branch parochialism—we will keep producing William B. Franklins: magnificent on PowerPoint, catastrophic when the bullets fly.

Franklin’s career is not ancient history. It is a warning.

Donald E. Vandergriff
Major, U.S. Army (Ret.)
14 December 2025

Bibliography

Johnson, Ludwell H. Red River Campaign: Politics and Cotton in the Civil War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1958.

O’Reilly, Francis Augustin. The Fredericksburg Campaign: Winter War on the Rappahannock. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003.

Rable, George C. Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.

Snell, Mark A. From First to Last: The Life of Major General William B. Franklin. New York: Fordham University Press, 2002.

United States War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series 1, Vol. 21 (Fredericksburg). Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1888.

———. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series 1, Vol. 34, Part 1 (Red River Campaign). Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1891.

Vandergriff, Donald E. Adopting Mission Command: Developing Leaders for a Superior Command Culture. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2019.