Why Franklin, Washington and Lincoln considered American democracy an 'experiment' -- and were unsure if it would survive

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Thomas Coens, University of Tennessee

(THE CONVERSATION) From the time of the founding era to the present day, one of the more common things said about American democracy is that it is an “experiment.”

Most people can readily intuit what the term is meant to convey, but it is still a phrase that is bandied about more often than it is explained or analyzed.

Is American democracy an “experiment” in the bubbling-beakers-in-a-laboratory sense of the word? If so, what is the experiment attempting to prove, and how will we know if and when it has succeeded?

Establishing, then keeping, the republic

To the extent you can generalize about such a diversegroup, the founders meant two things, I would argue, by calling self-government an “experiment.”

First, they saw their work as an experimental attempt to apply principles derived from science and the study of history to the management of political relations. As the founder John Jay explained to a New York grand jury in 1777,...