Came later home that night;

His babes had cried themselves to sleep,

His young wife's cheek was white;

The scanty meal had failed that day;

She looked up in his face,

As if in his frank, honest eyes

A ray of hope to trace.

He sat down by the fireless hearth,

She leant her close beside;

He said: "Dear wife, the livelong day

I hunted far and wide;

Each factory door was closed; I begged

An hour's work in vain;

I could not bear to seek my home

And hear my babes complain.

"Weary and hungry, as I sat

Beside a lighted hall,

A comrade bade me enter in;

'Twas meant, he thought, for all

The workingmen to speak their minds

And get their wrongs redressed.

''Tis wrong,' said I, 'that we should starve.'

I went in with the rest.

"One stood upon the platform there,

And told us how we might

In one great cry for work and bread

Our thousand tongues unite.

Our England's Parliament would hear,

Our English Queen would heed,

For never yet her royal heart

Disdained her people's need.

"Our war-ships, with their hundred guns,

Would rake the western shore,

Drive back the Northerners, and bring

The bales of cotton o'er;

Our factory doors would open wide

With work and wages high;

I thought how glad my babes would be,

As if relief were nigh.

"But then another rose to speak;

You know, my wife, the slaves!

We've often talked of how they wished

Their children in their graves,

And thought how hard 'twould be for us

To part with Robbie there,

Or our small Jennie, so like you

In sunny eyes and hair.

"This speaker told us how, where'er

The Northern army went,

They broke the fetters from the slave,

Telling what freedom meant,

And how those slaves looked up in prayer,

Blessing our dear Lord's name

That to them, in His own good time,

This 'blessed Union' came.

"How Northern teachers into schools

The little ones have brought,

To learn the same most Holy Book

Our own dear ones are taught;

The men go out to till the fields

Gladly, as freemen may,

And mothers o'er their babes rejoice

Throughout the summer day.

"But should the North be driven back,

God help those freedmen then!

For their sake would we bear our lot,

Silent, as Christian men?

His voice grew lower as he spoke:

'I know 'tis hard to bear,

But—think of Jesus on the cross,

For others died He there!'

"So, wife, I stood up in my place

And shouted, 'Aye, we will!'

The 'ayes' of our brave working men

They seemed the roof to thrill;

We shouted it again, again,

It was a glorious night—

But, when I came to this bare house,

—Dear wife, did I do right?"

"Most surely, right," she said, yet turned

With hidden tears away,

Murmuring—"God, give my little ones

Their bread from day to day."

And many such staunch working men

Went hungry home that night,

And thanked God he had strengthened them

To suffer for the right.

The working men of Lancashire!

Their great self-sacrifice

Those, for whose sake 'twas undergone,

Will never know or prize;

Only when freedmen kneel at dawn

And bless their friends in prayer,

They bless the noble working men

Of England, unaware.

This Poem highlights the antislavery beliefs of Lancashire workers, who, in their efforts to deny the Confederacy any power or influence over the North, temporarily concluded working. This was seen as an admirable act, as these workers willingly gave up their family's sole source of income to boycott the South's cotton sales. The passionate sacrifice of income and inspirational display of free will was enough to garner national attention. The worker in this poem endures the immense suffrage of his family: "his babes had cried themselves to sleep, his young wife's cheek was white." This poem is a fantastic example of the lengths that people were willing to go to win the war and cripple their opposition; no matter the expense, they were willing to make personal sacrifices that would contribute to their region's cause. Since this poem was published in the Anti-Slavery Standard, an immense amount of readers and supporters were inspired by it's appeal to ethos; in a sense, it was almost like a rally cry, for all to join the cause and make sacrifices to win the war and end slavery. 

Poem and information retrieved from http://scholarlyediting.org/2013/editions/nas.18640130.4b.html

Newspaper ad retrieved from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/93/Nat_Turner_woodcut.jpg