On Dec. 2, 1859, the Commonwealth of Virginia executed John Brown. Brown had been convicted of multiple murders, treason against Virginia, and inciting a slave revolt in relation to his raid on an armory in Harpers Ferry.
John Brown was an abolitionist who hated the injustice of slavery. He asserted human equality as a Christian principle to be followed by all who feared God. Brown also believed peaceful efforts at combating slavery had failed. He chose violence. It began before Harpers Ferry, including killing pro-slavery settlers in “Bleeding Kansas” in 1856.
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In 2024, Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the killing of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, asserted the healthcare industry is corrupt. He seems to believe it destroys lives, even ends them, through delaying and denying coverage for medical care. Mangione also seems to believe peaceful efforts at addressing those issues no longer work. In his alleged manifesto regarding the murder, he wrote, “It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.”
The two men are separated by more than 150 years of American history. Moreover, Brown was a fervent religious adherent; Mangione, while holding his views with a religious-like devotion, does not seem driven by Brown’s Christianity. Many, too, would place significant moral distinctions in assessing the respective issue driving each man to bloody action.
But Brown and Mangione share important qualities. Both allegedly were willing to kill to pursue a moral crusade against something they thought to be evil.
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This is a rejection of the American political system as it then and now operates. When citizens turn from the peaceful pursuit of their goals through persuasion and elections, opting to make themselves legislator, judge, and executor, they do more than reject our political system. They reject legitimate participation in the political community, period.
Brown became more than a murderer in the eyes of many. But he also became a symbol for radical commitment to abolishing slavery. We still know a song in his honor that says, “John Brown's body lies a-mold'ring in the grave/His soul goes marching on.”
As with Brown, some wish to make Mangione into a hero. It is not breaking news that people have suffered strange, infuriating, and destructive results related to decisions made by health insurance companies. They believe their rage has found an outlet in this man and his alleged murder of a healthcare executive. They wish lawyers and pundits to use his upcoming trial to try to turn the tables, placing the healthcare insurance industry on trial for its failings, alleged and real.
Lionizing Brown in the 1850s and beyond was a mistake. It justified evil in order to combat evil.
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Lionizing Mangione would also be wrong. It would justify evil in order to address a serious problem in our society. As with Brown, making Mangione into a hero would say that violence speaks louder than words. It would declare that violence should replace words as our mode of seeking justice and good policy.
If convicted, Mangione likely will spend the rest of his life in prison. He deserves this punishment at least for his alleged cold-blooded killing. So let us not make him a martyr. Instead, let us learn from him the perils of ideological rage mixed with personal pain. Let us seek to find peaceful, political answers. Let us do so, as Abraham Lincoln urged, according to “the better angels of our nature.”
Adam Carrington is an associate professor at Ashland University.