This chapter discusses Cotton Famine poetry in relation to the emotion of shame, including where it is associated with gendered or national identities. In the first section, entitled “Female Morality,” there is an examination of poetry that highlights the danger to female morality represented by economic hardship, and these warnings are associated with fictional tropes of compromised sexuality. The second section, “Masculine Crises” examines verse that articulates the emasculating effects of unemployment and destabilised domestic structures during the Cotton Famine, noting how, in spite of the industrial reality, unemployment is figured as an entirely male problem. The third section, “National Shame” focusses on poetry that interprets the Lancashire Cotton Famine as source of national shame, focussing largely on the failure or absence of relief efforts. It also considers reasons why regional shame relating to the slavery-associated source of American cotton is rarely confronted in Cotton Famine poetry.