Winchester College's Abolitionist Corpse Display

In 1859, students from Winchester Medical College in Virginia took the body of Watson Brown, a son of American abolitionist John Brown, after the raid on Harpers Ferry. The college skinned and preserved it at full length as an anatomical exhibit; a label identified the body as John Brown's son and declared, "Thus always with Abolitionists." Union troops discovered the display after entering Winchester in 1862, and soldiers under General Nathaniel Banks retaliated by burning the college to the ground, and the institution never reopened.

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