Silas Soule

Silas Stillman Soule (/ˈsoʊl/ [sole]) (July 26, 1838 – April 23, 1865) was an American abolitionist, military officer and 'conductor' on the Underground Railroad. 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 in command of 1st Colorado Cavalry, Company D that was present at Sand Creek and the massacre of Native Americans that occurred there on November 29, 1864. He testified at a U.S. military hearing that convened in February 1865 to investigate the event. In retaliation for doing so, Soule was murdered two months later. Early life Silas Soule was born into a family of abolitionists in Bath, Maine, 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 brother 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.