21. Throughout his short life Soule was a practical joker
Soule developed a reputation for practical jokes throughout his life, through the time-honored pastime on the frontier of swapping tall tales, and in pranks played on friends, some of them elaborate. He enjoyed leaving his friends wondering if he had been serious or not when telling them of some change in his life. When he married Hersa Coberly in Denver in 1865, he did so on April 1, in a private ceremony, a decision the couple made mutually. The date was chosen, in part, by the pair to keep their friends guessing if they were actually married or not. The Court of Inquiry had not yet completed its investigation of Sand Creek.
The federal investigations into the Sand Creek affair were dealt a blow just two weeks after his marriage, when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in Washington DC. The murder, which came on the heels of the surrender of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, removed the story of Sand Creek from the pages of newspapers, and the public’s attention shifted to Lincoln’s funeral and the manhunt for John Wilkes Booth. The army investigation into Sand Creek continued. In July, Colorado Territorial Governor John Evans’ complicity with Chivington both before the massacre and attempting to cover it up had been revealed, in part through Soule’s testimony. He was asked to resign by President Johnson.