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, 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.