By the 1830s, Americans had largely embraced the concept of a popular democracy that granted men the right to vote regardless of their ownership of property. The expansion of male suffrage to the growing number of male wage workers was a significant shift from the traditional republican philosophy of the founding fathers that required “virtuous” citizens to hold sufficient property to be considered capable of acting on behalf of the common good rather than from economic self-interest. But Jacksonian democracy not only implied the expansion of male suffrage, a vigorous public political discourse, and enthusiastic party politics— it also represented a new era of exclusion for women and people of color. Americans had shifted their standard for political participation from economic difference to perceived natural difference, and most Americans embraced gender and race as essential to a natural hierarchy. Whereas Americans celebrated the unshackling of white male opportunity and lauded the civic equality of men across classes, they insisted on the immutable natural limitations of women, African Americans, and Indians.