William Nelson Rector Beall (March 20, 1825 – July 25, 1883) was a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War.

At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Beall resigned his commission and was appointed as a captain of cavalry in the Confederate Army.

At the Siege of Port Hudson, the Confederate forces surrendered on July 9, 1863, and Beall was taken as a prisoner of war.

He established an office in New York City and sold cotton allowed through the Union blockade of southern ports.

On January 3, 1865, Union General Henry Halleck wrote to General Ulysses Grant regarding Beall: Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton suspended Beall's parole and placed him in Fort Lafayette in New York Harbor as a prisoner of war until the cotton safely arrived from Mobile, Alabama.