I've heard of the Lancashire Cotton Famine, but having been in a local museum the other day the part on Cotton mills completely missed out anything about it, so I was wondering what the effects of the American Civil War on Lancashire, as well as the rest of the country, and what differing views did the population have?
A very similar question to this came up the other day: What did the British Empire think of the Civil War when they heard about it, "only" 90 years after their independence from the British Empire?
As I wrote in that thread, the sudden and massive decline in the supply of raw cotton from the Southern United States to the textile industry in northwest England created an economic crisis and social unrest. I quoted from James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom, a really excellent one-volume history of the civil war:
In July 1862 the supply of raw cotton in Britain stood at one-third the normal level. Three-quarters of the cotton-mill workers were unemployed or on short time. Charity and the dole could not ward off restiveness in Lancashire working-class districts.
Some other commenters recommended other texts which focus more specifically on Britain's role (or lack thereof) in the civil war, and there were some great answers in that thread generally, so I'd suggest checking those out as a starting point.