You Had One Job

“THE German bumblebee?” Wolseley snorted. “The Duke of `every change to be made at the right time, and the right time is when you cannot help it’? … he actually said that to me once; we’d still be in Crimea if he had been in command after Raglan. And not that he does a particularly good job of it, but Cambridge is the commander-in-chief – who do they expect to take over if he comes to North America? Scarlett? Airey? Craufurd? Lawrenson? One would expect we need the adjutant-general, the quarter-master general, and inspectors-general of infantry and cavalry at home in the midst of the largest war the Army has seen since Napoleon…”

Quite apart from the multi-decade anachronism Wolseley has just committed, there are other issues here.





While the British commander-in-chief (senior general) did not take the field during the 19th century to my knowledge, the US Commanding General certainly did. (Dearborn, Scott, McClellan and Grant all took the field as Commanding General or General-in-Chief.)
The Adjutant-General took the field in 1882 (Wolseley, at that time) and 1884 (same).
The QMG took the field in 1809 (Brownrigg) and 1899 (either Clarke or White; they were in the field at the same time).
Major-General James Robertson Craufurd is the Inspector-General of the Foot Guards, not of all infantry - as such it makes little sense to say he'd be overworked in a Trent war, especially since the Guards planned to deploy their entire fighting echelon to North America (three battalions in a Brigade of Guards, with the other four kept at home.) Worse, the actual inspector-general of infantry is in America already (Rumley) and has spent the last few months doing nothing at all.
The Duke of Cambridge had the Inspector of Cavalry position during the Crimea, at which he certainly fought.

There is no reason to assume generals from all the stated positions should need to stay at home - and if one of them is replaced, it simply means a single new individual in one of the positions, assisted by his staff.
Wolseley should have known this, even if TFSmith does not.

This whole section seems to be a list of excuses for why known skilled British generals are kept out of the fight. These positions are not intended to be places to put the most talented men in the army to do nothing - they are departmental heads, in most cases.
It seems that TFSmith has decided the British are more worried about keeping the army properly administrated than actually winning it. He also presents Cambridge as a kind of megalomaniac for planning to appoint himself as the commander in Canada.
This is odd as this was a real plan of Lincoln himself.


Oddly enough, however, there is a safe pair of hands doing nothing important - Codrington, in Gibraltar. There is also Hope Grant, in India, and Cameron in New Zealand, all three of whom TFSmith assures us are vital in their current positions and cannot be spared. Of the three only Cameron has an active campaign taking place, and any threat to Gibraltar is unlikely to require so talented a man as Codrington even if the French have thrown their lot in with the Union.


Indeed, it seems as though the minimum requirement to be an "available" general for the purposes of TFSmith's assessment is to have no job at all - for the British, that is. It is quite permitted for a Union officer to simultaneously invent entirely new forms of artillery and serve in the field, and for Union generals to slide easily into the important positions at need.

In one respect, the picture painted has some truth to it - there was some concern in reality about whether Williams should be replaced, but the candidates available in the UK were not considered to be worth the disruption in the event of a war. But here there has been no war until April - which is easily enough time to contact India and have an unimpeachable general like James Hope Grant or Mansfield sent over to the US. (Of course, given how TFSmith's portrayal of Wolseley turned his historical victory at Tel-el-Kebir into an ignominious defeat via the agency of magic boats, it may not really have helped.)