Francis Marion Poteet of the 49th North Carolina wrote a series of nine letters during the Siege of Petersburg, all available online as part of the North Carolina State Archive’s Digital Civil War Collection1. The descriptions of each letter indicate they are in public domain status and may be reproduced elsewhere. I also asked for written permission to use the transcriptions of the letters. Poteet’s letters convey the difficult decisions facing the men in Lee’s army in 1864-65 as the end of the war drew near. Stay and fight, or desert and return home to family? It was a tough question that all of Lee’s men faced in the trenches surrounding Petersburg and Richmond.
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Letters of Francis Marion Poteet:
- LT: July 5, 1864 Francis Marion Poteet
- LT: July 11, 1864 Francis Marion Poteet
- LT: August 21, 1864 Francis Marion Poteet
- LT: August 30, 1864 Francis Marion Poteet
- LT: September 25, 1864 Francis Marion Poteet
- LT: October 4, 1864 Francis Marion Poteet
- LT: December 3, 1864 Francis Marion Poteet
- LT: December 31, 1864 Francis Marion Poteet
- LT: January 18, 1865 Francis Marion Poteet
- Poteet-Dickson Letters, 1861-1902, Local Call Number P.C. 1825, MARS ID 5209. Digital Civil War Collection, North Carolina State Archives, North Carolina. Courtesy of the North Carolina Office of Archives and History, Raleigh, North Carolina ↩