The franchise in early America was neither as open nor closed as many suppose. Before the early 1700s, if you came to America, the odds you came in chains were about 75% Of ANY class or color. The British exported the working poor because they didn't have enough "work houses" or "poor houses" to deal with them all. Australia gets all the smack for this, but American colonies were more Jamestown, which was hell on earth for most, and less Plymouth. The point is that participation was land ownership, not white land ownership. And covenants forbidden the sale of land to anyone but whites was a much later thing.