John Wilkes Booth

Divided loyalties and ironies tore at Marylanders’ hearts throughout the Civil War, as enslaved African-Americans and free United States Colored Troops, spies and smugglers, civilians imprisoned without trial to protect freedom, and neighbors and families at odds reflected the strains endured across eastern Maryland from the Eastern Shore to the suburbs of Washington. Those strains continued even after Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, and John Wilkes Booth used the help of Southern Maryland’s Confederate underground during his flight from Washington, D.C. after shooting President Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865.

Maryland · United States