The American Civil War is often said to have predicted the way in which later wars such as the Boer War and the First World War would be fought, and as a result the British Army has often been severely criticised both by historians and in popular culture for not heeding its lessons. This talk re-examines and challenges this long-held view, and demonstrates that the responses to the lessons of the war in the British Army were more complex, better informed, and of higher quality than normally depicted. Taking a nineteenth century perspective rather than hindsight from the South African veldt or the Western Front trenches, it will look at how the Army reacted to the trends and changes in the nature of warfare revealed by American experience. Although sometimes flawed, its study of the American Civil War meant that the British Army was better prepared for the wars of the twentieth century than previously acknowledged.