6. Booth expected to be treated as a hero by Confederate sympathizers.
John Wilkes Booth considered his assassination of Abraham Lincoln as the finest appearance of his career on stage. As such, he expected to be greeted with applause and support by those sympathetic to the Confederacy. Instead, he found, to his great dismay, he was a hounded man, who few wanted to associate with. He first encountered this reaction when he and Herold stumbled upon a man in the dark while searching for the home of Colonel Cox. The man, a local named Oswell Swann, agreed to guide them to the Cox home, but only if he received payment for his services. He collected his fee and vanished into the night, leaving the fugitives to the hospitality of Colonel Cox. That hospitality consisted of a few supplies, including whiskey, and a servant to lead the men to a hiding place in the woods.
Cox informed Booth that he was to remain hidden in the woods until contacted. He then sent for Thomas Jones, a Confederate agent with experience ferrying spies and information across the Potomac River into Virginia. Jones visited the fugitives in the woods, where they concealed themselves in a pine thicket. He agreed to guide them across the Potomac, again for a fee, but told them it would be several days before he could do so. Federal troops combed the area, searching properties and interrogating citizens over whether they had seen two men traveling together. Instead of receiving the expected support and appreciation of the south, Booth found himself confined to a pine thicket. From newspapers provided by Jones he discovered he was widely considered a villainous murderer, rather than a Confederate hero. He lamented over his fate in a diary he kept in an appointment book.