Silas Soule

Silas Stillman Soule (/soʊl/ SOHL; July 26, 1838 – April 23, 1865) was an American abolitionist, teenage conductor on the Underground Railroad, military officer, and early example of what would later be called a "whistleblower". He is honored as a hero for disobeying orders to participate in a massacre of Native Americans, and then giving evidence against his commander despite threats on his life.

As a Kansas Jayhawker, he supported and was a proponent of John Brown's movement in the time of strife leading up to the American Civil War. During the War, Soule joined the Colorado volunteers and rose to the rank of captain in the Union Army. Soule was present at the Sand Creek massacre in 1864, commanding the 1st Colorado Cavalry, Company D, but refused to take part in the killing, and ordered his men not to harm the Native Americans. Afterwards he testified about the massacre at a military hearing. Another soldier murdered Soule two months later, in what some believed was retaliation. Soule's assassination at age 26 brought a tide of outrage on his behalf and sympathy for his widow.

Silas Soule was born on July 26, 1838, in Bath, Maine, the son of Amasa Soule, a cooper, and Sophia (Low) Soule. He was born into a family of abolitionists, and was descended from Mayflower passenger George Soule. He was raised in Maine and Massachusetts. Soule was a "friendly, intelligent, and good-natured young man, full of practical jokes, [and] tall tales[.]" In 1854, his family became part of the newly formed New England Emigrant Aid Company, an organization whose goal was to help settle the Kansas Territory and bring it into the Union as a free state. His father and older brother William arrived in the vicinity of modern day Lawrence in November 1854, and became one of the town's founding families. The teenage Silas, his mother, and two sisters came the following summer.

Shortly after the family's arrival at Coal Creek located a few miles south of Lawrence, Silas's father, Amasa, established his household as a stop on the Underground Railroad. At the age of 17, Silas escorted escaped slaves from Missouri north to freedom.

During the late 1850s, pro-slavery forces from Missouri and abolitionist forces from Kansas were engaged in open warfare. The conflict was over whether Kansas would be admitted to the Union as a slave or free state. This period was often called "Bleeding Kansas". On January 25, 1859, twenty pro-slavery men had crossed into Kansas to look for escaped slaves. They located and ambushed an Underground Railroad party led by Dr. John Doy, a physician in Lawrence, who was escorting 13 former slaves to Iowa. The men from Missouri arrested Dr. Doy and sold the former slaves.

Doy, meanwhile, was tried and convicted of abducting slaves and sentenced to five years in a Missouri penitentiary. Because he was awaiting transfer to the prison at the jailhouse in St. Joseph, Soule and a group of men from Lawrence decided they would free him. Soule went into the jail and convinced the jailkeeper that he had a letter from Doy's wife. The note in fact read: "Tonight, at twelve o'clock." Later that night they overpowered the jailer and helped Doy escape back to Kansas. Thereafter known as "The Immortal Ten", when they reached Lawrence they had their photo taken (above left).

After John Brown was captured following the raid on Harper's Ferry, Soule once again found himself planning a jailbreak. In February 1860, after Brown had been tried, convicted, and executed, Soule visited Brown's followers, Albert Hazlett and Aaron Dwight Stevens, jailed at Charles Town, (then in Virginia), and offered to help the men escape. As part of this plan, Soule posed as a drunken Irishman, got himself arrested for brawling, and was put into the Charles Town jail for the night. He managed to charm the jailer into letting him out of his cell for a short while during which he contacted the two prisoners. Hazlett, and Stevens, however, both refused to be sprung from the jail, choosing instead to become martyrs for the cause. They were both hanged on March 16, 1860. After his release from the Charles Town jail, Soule traveled to Boston, where he often met with various abolitionists and befriended the poet Walt Whitman.

Later in 1860, Soule—along with his brother William, and a cousin—was restless, and went west to the gold fields in Colorado where he dug for gold and worked in a blacksmith shop. In December 1861, after the start of the Civil War, Soule enlisted in Company K; 1st Colorado Infantry, and took part in the New Mexico campaign of 1862, including the key Battle of Glorieta Pass. In November 1864, he was assigned the command of Company D, 1st Colorado Cavalry Regiment.