Tragic Prelude is a mural painted by the American artist John Steuart Curry for the Kansas State Capitol building in Topeka, Kansas. It is located on the east side of the second floor rotunda. On the north wall it depicts the abolitionist John Brown with a Bible in one hand, on which the Greek letters alpha and omega of Revelation 1:8 can be seen. In his other hand he holds a rifle, referred to as the "Beecher's Bibles". He is in front of Union and Confederate soldiers, living and dead, with a tornado and a prairie fire approaching. Emigrants with covered wagons travel from east to west.
The "tragic prelude" is the Bleeding Kansas period of 1854–1860, seen as a prelude to or dress rehearsal for the Civil War, a period of which John Brown was at the center, fighting to prevent Kansas from being made a slave state. The term "tragic prelude" for this period of Kansas history is attributed by Curry to his patron, the newspaper editor William Allen White.
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