Throughout the Civil War, divided loyalties and bitter ironies strained Marylanders in many ways, involving enslaved African Americans and free United States Colored Troops, spies and smugglers, civilians imprisoned without trial, and neighbors and families set against one another in Maryland and on distant battlefields. From the Eastern Shore to the suburbs of Washington, eastern Maryland endured these pressures in ways difficult to imagine today, and they continued even after Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. After shooting President Abraham Lincoln in Washington, D.C. on April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth relied on the help of Southern Maryland’s Confederate underground during his flight from the city before his eventual capture south of the Potomac River.