 The most prominent Maryland leaders and officers during the Civil War included Governor Thomas H. Hicks who, despite his early sympathies for the South, helped prevent the state from seceding, and Confederate Brigadier General George H. Steuart, who was a noted brigade commander under Robert E. Lee in the Army of Northern Virginia.Abolition of slavery in the State of Maryland came before the end of the war, with a new third constitution voted approval in 1864 by a small majority of Radical Republican Unionists then controlling the nominally Democratic state.Animosity against Lincoln would remain, and Marylander John Wilkes Booth would assassinate President Lincoln on April 14, 1865, crying "sic semper tyrannis" the Virginia state motto as he did so in Washington's Ford's Theater, then fleeing and hiding in southern Maryland for a week hunted by Federal troops before slipping across the Potomac and later shot in a Virginia barn.