Silas Soule

Silas Soule as one of "The Immortal Ten"

Silas Soule was born into a family of abolitionists in Bath, Maine. He was raised in Maine and Massachusetts and, 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 brother arrived in Kansas, near Lawrence (of which the Soule family was one of the founding families), in November 1854. Silas, his mother and two sisters came the following summer.

Shortly after the family's arrival at Coal Creek, a few miles south of Lawrence near present-day Vinland, Amasa Soule, Silas's father, established his household as a stop on the Underground Railroad. At the young age of 17, Silas was escorting slaves, escapees from Missouri, north to freedom. His sister, Anne Julia Soule Prentiss, told of her family's early experience in Maine, Massachusetts and Kansas in a 1929 interview: "Our house was on the 'Underground Railway'. John Brown was often there... My brother, Silas, and Brown were close friends. Silas went out on many a foray with him. I recall well when Brown came to our cabin one night with thirteen slaves, men, women and children. He had run them away from Missouri. Brown left them with us. Father would always take in all the Negroes he could. Silas took the whole thirteen from our home eight miles to Mr. Grover's stone barn..."[1]

During these pre-war years, pro-slavery forces from Missouri and abolitionist forces from Kansas were engaged in open warfare. The fight was whether Kansas would be admitted to the Union as a slave or as a free state. This conflict, often called "Bleeding Kansas", enhanced the reputation of Silas Soule as a brave and resourceful fighter.

In July 1859, Soule was part of an action on the Missouri border. Twenty pro-slavery men had crossed into Kansas to look for escaped slaves. They ambushed a party led by Dr. John Doy, a physician in Lawrence, escorting 13 former slaves (eight men, three women and two children) toward safety in Iowa. The men from Missouri arrested Dr. Doy and sold the former slaves. Doy was soon tried and convicted in Missouri for abducting slaves and sentenced to five years in the local penitentiary. Soule and a group of other men from Lawrence decided to free Doy. Soule was sent into the jailhouse in St. Joseph where Doy was being held. Soule convinced the jailkeeper that he had a message from Doy's wife. The note, in fact, read "Tonight, at twelve o'clock." Later that night, they overpowered the jailer, freed Doy, and led him across the Missouri back to Kansas.[2] When they reached Lawrence, they had their photo taken. This photo of "The Immortal Ten," now held by the Kansas State Historical Society, is widely circulated.

His skills at prison escapes came into use once again when John Brown was captured after his raid on Harper's Ferry where Brown was tried, convicted and sentenced to death by hanging. In November 1859, Soule visited the incarcerated Brown and offered to plan a jailbreak and help him flee from Virginia to hide out up north either in New York state or Canada. However, Brown told Soule that he had already decided to become a martyr for the abolitionist cause and willingly allowed himself to be hanged, hoping his death would help bring on a war between North and South, frustrating Soule's planned rescue attempt. Thomas Wentworth Higginson put together a rescue attempt of two of Brown's men, Albert Hazlett and Aaron Stevens, during which Soule posed as a drunken Irishman and got himself arrested for brawling. Put into the Charles Town jail for the night, he charmed the jailer into letting him out of his cell for a short while in which Soule contacted the two men as well as John Brown once again with a second offer to help all three of them escape that night. Brown, Hazlett and Stevens all refused to be sprung from the jail. Afterwards upon his release from the Charles Town jail, Soule traveled to Boston, where he often met with various abolitionists and also befriended the poet Walt Whitman.[3]

Captain Silas Soule (front row, right) with Major Edward W. Wynkoop during a peace meeting with the Cheyenne chiefs on September 28, 1864

In May 1860, Soule, along with his brother William L.G., and his cousin, Sam Glass, went to the gold fields in Colorado.[4] He dug for gold and worked in a blacksmith shop.

In 1861, after the breakout of the Civil War, Soule enlisted in Company K, 1st Colorado Infantry (the 1st Regiment of Colorado Volunteers) and took part in the victorious New Mexico Campaign of 1862, including the key Battle of Glorieta Pass. He made his way up the ranks, and in November 1864 was assigned the command of Company D, 1st Colorado Cavalry (the 1st Colorado Volunteer Cavalry Regiment).

On April 1, 1865, Silas married Thersa A. "Hersa" Coberly.[8] Just 22 days later, their marriage ended when he was murdered.[8]

Silas Soule's memorial plaque in downtown Denver

On April 23, 1865, 80 days after testifying, and three weeks after getting married, Captain Soule was on duty as a Provost Marshal in Denver when he went to investigate guns being fired at 10:30 pm. With his pistol out, Soule went around a corner and faced Charles Squier. Soule fired the first shot and wounded Squier's left arm, but Squier fired a bullet into Soule's right cheek bone. Soule was dead before help could arrive. Squier dropped his pistol and ran before he could be arrested by the authorities. Soule's death came just a little over two weeks before the end of the Civil War.

Squier was turned in and was jailed awaiting trial. He escaped and fled to New York where his father was. Once there he held various jobs, and tried to rejoin the Army but was rejected. Squier then fled to Central America trying to avoid the law. His legs were crushed in a railroad accident and he later died from gangrene in 1869. Despite his crime, he was buried in New York with honors.[9]

Capt. Soule and Lt. Cramer were both buried at Riverside Cemetery in Denver. Native American anniversary events held annually in remembrance of the Sand Creek Massacre begin at the cemetery where representatives from the Northern Cheyenne tribe of Montana, the Northern Arapaho tribe of Wyoming, the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes of Oklahoma, the National Park Service and History Colorado decorate the graves of Soule and Cramer.[10]

In 2010, a memorial plaque was placed by the History Colorado society on a building at the northwest corner of Fifteenth and Arapahoe streets in Denver. The plaque reads:

• Hugh Thompson, Jr., credited with intervening in, and later exposing, the 1968 My Lai Massacre.

• Testimony of Captain Silas S. Soule before the military commission investigating the massacre of Cheyenne Indians at Sand Creek, Colorado, in 1864
• Captain Silas S. Soule, a Pioneer Martyr, an article originally published in The Colorado Magazine, Vol. IV, May 1927.
• Silas Soule: A Short, Eventful Life of Moral Courage by Tom Bensing

• Silas Soule at Find a Grave
• The Sand Creek Massacre » Silas Soule
• The Life of Silas Soule - Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site (U.S. National Park Service)

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