[wideawake]

The unionists were against expansion of slavery in the territories for racist reasons, to "keep it pure for free whites".

If that was the case, such an opinion was not publicly expressed by very many voices in the North.

Your statement is more invented propaganda than historical fact.

[central_va]

Lincoln and his party were billed as “the only white man’s party in the country.”

[wfu_deacons]

I think the opinion was very prevalent.
http://www.slavenorth.com/exclusion.htm

[central_va]

The Republican party's opposition to the expansion of slavery, therefore, encompassed a distinctive moral protest against slavery itself, but also contained, at least for many Republicans, a racial concern that the territories be reserved primarily for free white people.

Link here.

RICHARD B. LATNER Professor Ph.D., UW Madison, 1972

Richard B. Latner specializes in Jacksonian America; Sectionalism and Civil War; and Information Technology.

[rustbucket]

[central_va]: The unionists were against expansion of slavery in the territories for racist reasons, to "keep it pure for free whites".

[wideawake]: If that was the case, such an opinion was not publicly expressed by very many voices in the North. Your statement is more invented propaganda than historical fact.

Here are the words of one Abraham Lincoln to Stephen A. Douglas on the subject [Peoria speech, October 16, 1854; emphasis mine below]:

Whether slavery shall go into Nebraska, or other new Territories, is not a matter of exclusive concern to the people who may go there. The whole nation is interested that the best use shall be made of these Territories. We want them for homes of free white people. This they cannot be, to any considerable extent, if slavery shall be planted within them. Slave States are places for poor white people to remove from, not to remove to. New free States are the places for poor people to go to, and better their condition. For this use the nation needs these Territories.