Burning of Winchester Medical College

See also: Watson Brown (abolitionist)

The Winchester Medical College (WMC) building, currently located at 302 W. Boscawen Street, Winchester, Virginia, along with all its records, equipment, museum, and library, was burned on May 16, 1862, by Union troops occupying the city.[1]: 843  This was "retaliation for the dissection of cadavers from John Brown's Raid".[2] More specifically, it was in retaliation for the desecration they discovered of one of those cadavers, the body of one of John Brown's sons,[3][4]: 298 [5][6]: 125  identified years later as Watson. The body of John Brown's son, fighting against slavery in the raid on Harpers Ferry, had been dishonored: made into an anatomical specimen in the College's museum, with the label "Thus always with Abolitionists" (mirroring Thus Always to Tyrants, the motto of the Commonwealth of Virginia). In addition, students at the school collected and then dissected the bodies of three other members of Brown's troop (John Anthony Copeland Jr., Shields Green, Lewis Sheridan Leary) and a black boy was apparently tortured and killed there for favoring the Union.

The College never reopened.

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Wmcguire was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ "Holiday House Tour Spotlight: 302 W. Boscawen St". Preservation Historic Winchester, Inc. November 15, 2011. Archived from the original on July 2, 2021. Retrieved October 20, 2020.
  3. ^ "M'Guire Honored at Ceremony Here". Times Dispatch (Richmond, Virginia). October 12, 1935. p. 1. Archived from the original on October 27, 2020. Retrieved November 19, 2020.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference Feather was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Preservation of Historic Winchester (November 15, 2011). "Holiday House Tour Spotlight: 302 W. Boscawen St". Archived from the original on July 2, 2021. Retrieved October 20, 2020.
  6. ^ Phipps, Sheila R. (2003). Genteel Rebel: The Life of Mary Greenhow Lee. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 0807128856. Archived from the original on 2021-07-02. Retrieved 2020-11-19 – via Project MUSE.