‘His Vest, I Perceive, Is But Padded with Cotton!’: John Bull in Cotton Famine Poetry during the American Civil War (1861–5)

The personification ‘John Bull’ was utilised in British poetry as the British national figurehead, while American poems used him as an object for ridicule. This article shows how poets utilised national personifications to create poems of protest that became part of a transatlantic discourse between American factions and the British during the American Civil War. During the war, poetry in British publications responded rapidly to the Union blockade, protesting the effect that the cotton dearth had on the livelihoods of workers in Britain’s textile industry. This poetry, known as Cotton Famine poetry, was used to vent frustrations and assert opinions on the topics of war, commerce, and slavery. This article highlights the complexities of thought surrounding pivotal events during the war such as the Trent Affair and the Emancipation Proclamation. Poems published in Union and Confederate newspapers condemned Britain’s neutrality, and British poems asserted Britain’s abolitionist mindset and nationhood. This article argues that these poems are cultural artefacts that remind the modern-day reader of Britain’s imperial past and its preoccupation with capitalism and nationalism during the mid-Victorian period.