This chapter, the first in Part Two of the book that focusses on Cotton Famine poetry and emotion, examines the poetry in relation to the emotion of sympathy, recognising that feeling’s immense variety of forms and centrality to discourses around poverty. After a brief introduction to the chapter, the first section, “British Sympathy for Lancashire Workers,” discusses the significant body of work published in British newspapers eliciting sympathy for unemployed Lancashire textile workers, and its role in raising awareness and encouraging charitable donation. The second section, “American and International Sympathy” opens out the discussion to external views of the condition of Lancastrian workers, examining poetry from both sides of the American conflict, Ireland, and Australia noting the plight of industrial northwest England during the crisis. This section includes analysis of an example of French Cotton Famine poetry detailing suffering in the textile city of Rouen. The third section, entitled, “British Poetry and Slavery” discusses British, and particularly Lancashire, newspaper poetry’s engagement with the issue of slavery and emancipation during the American Civil War.