Radicalism was strong among Lancashire cotton mill workers, and support for the Union was high despite the unemployment caused by the blockade.

The Rochdale Observer on 13th March 1864 reported the following rousing address from Chartist orator Ernest Jones:

'I have not forgotten the men of Rochdale, their love of freedom and of truth, and I trust that those who are now struggling, honourably and constitutionally, for the freedom of the black will join in every effort for a fresh instalment towards the Charter of an Englishman's liberty (applause). Those who pat the slave-owners of America on the backs would like to be slave-owners in England too (cheers and hear! hear!)...I trust that we shall find that in establishing liberty universally throughout the American continent we shall be placing the crowning pinnacle on the edifice of freedom here as well'.