Free-labor rhetoric let Republicans oppose slavery without appearing pro-Black.

Evidence

Horace Greeley, the nation’s most famous editor, promoted Helper’s book in the nation’s leading newspaper, the New York Tribune. Helper and Greeley partnered in soliciting funds and Republican endorsements to produce a small, more inexpensive Compendium version of The Impending Crisis of the South to distribute during the upcoming election. Widely endorsed and published in July 1859, the Compendium became an instant best-seller in Republican circles, but an instant dartboard in enslaving circles. Helper’s free White labor, antislavery message was everything the Republicans—and Lincoln—were looking for: a way to oppose slavery without being cast as pro-Black. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 550

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: the recurring political tactic of framing a pro-Black policy in Whites-only terms to keep it saleable — modern echoes in how climate, housing, or criminal-justice reform gets reframed as benefiting everyone.
• ADDENDUM: Directly relevant to ‘On Sacrifice’/‘Complaints About Immodesty’ themes? Not exactly — but this is a clear case for the reader’s core test of Kendi’s thesis: the free-labor framing is arguably an idea (economic argument) preceding policy, worth holding up against the ignorance→hate inversion.