Fate consigns most people to lives of quiet anonymity, choosing only a favored few to shape an era's epochal events. In the case of Silas S. Soule, a young Massachusetts abolitionist, fate was unusually fickle. It placed him at center stage for several historic moments, then, as if tired of his presence, killed him before he was 30 and left his name among the soon-to-be-forgotten.

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Soule was born in 1839. His father, Amassa Soule, was a fanatical abolitionist and religious zealot. That combination set the Soule household apart from its neighbors, and Silas spent a great deal of his youth defending himself against charges of being 'a damned Bobolishionist.'

In 1854, New England abolitionists formed the Emigrant Aid Society to help settle the Kansas Territory and–not incidentally–bring it into the Union as a Free State. Silas' father answered the society's call for pioneers, and by the end of the year the Soule family had taken up residence near Lawrence, Kan. Upon the family's arrival, Amassa Soule immediately established his household as a way station on the underground railroad. Silas, at 15, began escorting runaway slaves from Missouri through Lawrence, and north to freedom.

By the time Silas was 18, Missouri slavers on one side and New England abolitionists on the other had armed themselves and were openly fighting for the territory's future. The bitter struggle became known as 'Bleeding Kansas.' Young Soule quickly learned to handle a 'Kansas Bible'–the deadly Sharps carbine that abolitionists had sent west in crates marked 'Bibles.' He also mastered hit-and-run tactics and became notorious as one of Kansas' most-feared 'Jayhawkers.'

In 1859, Soule played a major role in one of the border war's most celebrated incidents. That January, 20 Missouri bushwhackers, seeking to recover runaway slaves, crossed the border into Kansas. They came upon and captured Dr. John Doy, a Lawrence physician and abolitionist, while he was escorting 12 escaped slaves to Oskaloosa. The slavers took their captives back to Weston, Mo., where they sold the blacks back into slavery and tried Doy, under Missouri law, for helping the slaves escape. Although Doy had not been in Missouri and hence could not have broken its law by helping the slaves, a Missouri jury quickly convicted him, and the judge sentenced him to five years at hard labor. Doy appealed his conviction, but while his lawyers argued the case, he sat in a St. Joseph jail cell.

Suspicious of Missouri's courts, a group of Lawrence men, including young Silas Soule, set out to free the abolitionist physician. When they reached St. Joseph, their leader, Major James B. Abbott, dispatched Soule to reconnoiter the jailhouse. The affable Soule charmed his way into the jail by convincing its keeper that he was carrying a message from Doy's wife. Once inside, Soule took careful note of the jail's layout and of the room where Doy was being held. The jailer, he learned, lived alone and had only one sentry outside to sound the alarm in case of trouble. Soule met with Doy, and while the jailer's attention was elsewhere, he slipped a note into the doctor's cell. It said simply, 'To-night, at twelve o'clock.'

When Soule reported back, the raiders realized their chances of successfully taking the jail by force were slim and changed their plans. At the appointed hour, they approached the building by pretending to have captured a horse thief. They asked the jailer, named Brown, to lock up the man until morning. After some argument, Brown admitted them. Once inside, they quickly disarmed the hapless jailer and freed Doy.

With Doy in tow, the raiders left the jail and headed for the Missouri River, which they intended to cross in boats previously cached for the purpose. At the river's edge, they discovered one of the boats was leaking. Two policemen walking their beat came along and, not recognizing Doy, obligingly held a lantern while one of the jailbreakers bailed the boat with his hat. When the boat was safe to board, they pushed off, crossed the Missouri and made good their escape.

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