Booth had been recognized by dozens of people as he stood before the footlights and brandished his dagger; but his swift horse quickly carried him beyond any haphazard pursuit.  He crossed the Navy-Yard bridge and rode into Maryland, being joined very soon by Herold.  The assassin and his wretched acolyte came at midnight to Mrs. Surratt’s tavern, and afterward pushed on through the moonlight to the house of an acquaintance of Booth, a surgeon named Mudd, who set Booth’s leg and gave him a room, where he rested until evening, when Mudd sent them on their desolate way south.  After parting with him they went to the residence of Samuel Cox near Port Tobacco, and were by him given into the charge of Thomas Jones, a contraband trader between Maryland and Richmond, a man so devoted to the interests of the Confederacy that treason and murder seemed every-day incidents to be accepted as natural and necessary.  He kept Booth and Herold in hiding at the peril of his life for a week, feeding and caring for them in the woods near his house, watching for an opportunity to ferry them across the Potomac; doing this while every wood-path was haunted by government detectives, well knowing that death would promptly follow his detection, and that a reward was offered for the capture of his helpless charge that would make a rich man of any one who gave him up.

With such devoted aid Booth might have wandered a long way; but there is no final escape but suicide for an assassin with a broken leg.  At each painful move the chances of discovery increased.  Jones was able, after repeated failures, to row his fated guests across the Potomac.  Arriving on the Virginia side, they lived the lives of hunted animals for two or three days longer, finding to their horror that they were received by the strongest Confederates with more of annoyance than enthusiasm, though none, indeed, offered to betray them.  Booth had by this time seen the comments of the newspapers on his work, and bitterer than death or bodily suffering was the blow to his vanity.  He confided his feelings of wrong to his diary, comparing himself favorably with Brutus and Tell, and complaining:  “I am abandoned, with the curse of Cain upon me, when, if the world knew my heart, that one blow would have made me great.”

On the night of April 25, he and Herold were surrounded by a party under Lieutenant E.P.  Doherty, as they lay sleeping in a barn belonging to one Garrett, in Caroline County, Virginia, on the road to Bowling Green.  When called upon to surrender, Booth refused.  A parley took place, after which Doherty told him he would fire the barn.  At this Herold came out and surrendered.  The barn was fired, and while it was burning, Booth, clearly visible through the cracks in the building, was shot by Boston Corbett, a sergeant of cavalry.  He was hit in the back of the neck, not far from the place where he had shot the President, lingered about three hours in great pain, and died at seven in the morning.