Glacial Errata, No. 92

One

On July 23, 1859, a man named Silas Soule arrived at the jailhouse in St. Joseph, Missouri. The abolitionist John Doy was being held there, accused of “abducting” thirteen enslaved individuals and “trafficking” them into Kansas. Soule claimed to have a message for Doy from his wife, so the jailer allowed him to deliver it, but the message in fact read: “Tonight, at twelve o’clock.” Soule was actually part of a group organized by Major James B. Abbot, who engineered a prison break for Doy. That night, two other men (pretending to be bounty hunters) distracted the guards while the rest of the group stormed the prison and freed Doy (who by that time was so ill he had to be physically carried out). For this, Soule and the rest of Abbot’s men became known as “The Immortal Ten.”

Two

Soule had been born in Maine and was raised as in an abolitionist family, who had moved to Kansas in 1854 as part of a drive to ensure that it remained free. Soule’s father used the family home as a stop on the Underground Railroad, and Silas regularly escorted freed people from Missouri north to freedom. In 1929, his sister Anne recalled, “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….”

After John Brown was hanged, Soule attempted another prison break: posing as a drunkard, he got himself arrested in the same jail where some of Brown’s men were imprisoned, and then offering to help them escape. The two men—Albert Hazlett and Aaron Dwight Stevens—turned down his request, opting instead to become martyrs for the cause.

Three

Afterwards, Soule developed a friendship with Walt Whitman, and eventually settled in Colorado. During the Civil War, he enlisted in the Union Army.

By November of 1864, Soule was a captain serving under Colonel John Chivington, who ordered his troops to attack Cheyenne chief Black Kettle’s encampment in southeastern Colorado (now Kiowa County). Black Kettle had repeatedly sought peace, and made clear that his intentions were not hostile, but Chivington had declared open war on the Cheyenne, and was determined to kill any and all he could find. Soule himself had met with Black Kettle and a delegation of Cheyenne seeking peace that September.

When Soule first learned of the order, he stormed the officers’ mess and told his fellow commanders that anyone who participated in the ambush, knowing the circumstances as they all did, would be a “low lived cowardly son of a bitch.” Despite Chivington’s threats to hang Soule for insubordination, he maintained that he would not participate in any murder of civilians.

On the day of the attack, November 29, Soule told the men under his command that the supposed “enemy” was a peace chief’s band of civilians, and told them in no uncertain terms that they “would not fire a shot today.” His company did not participate in the killings that day, acting as observers in what would become known as the Sand Creek Massacre. (Lieutenant Joseph Cramer also prevented his men from participating in the slaughter.)

Four

The Sand Creek Massacre would become known as one of the most openly brutal and savage events in a war already marked by the American government’s brutality and savagery. Chivington’s men killed around 150 people that day, almost all of them peaceful civilians (two thirds were women and children).

Soule’s and Cramer’s letters to their former commanding officer, Edward W. Wynkoop, alerted the media and led to a Congressional inquiry. The incident became a national outrage, thanks in part to Soule’s congressional testimony of what he and his men witnessed that day. One of the earliest American whistleblowers, Soule refused to remain silent about Chivington’s conduct and the utter barbarity of the men who participated. The incident led ultimately to the removal of Colorado’s territorial governor, John Evans, and to the refusal of the US Congress to further authorize a general war against the Plains Indians.

Five

Two months after testifying before Congress—on April 23, 1865—Silas Soule was assassinated by Charles Squier, one of Chivington’s men. It was two weeks after the end of the Civil War, and eight days after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination.

Squier escaped justice: he fled after the murder but was eventually captured by an officer who returned him to Denver for trial. But the officer himself was soon found dead of what some believe to be a staged drug overdose, and Squier returned to New York, where he held a number of odd jobs until 1869, when his legs were crushed in a railroad accident. He developed gangrene and died.

Rest in Power, Silas. And may the victims at Sand Creek never be forgotten.