New Fields of Adventure

The Writings of Lyman G. Bennett, Civil War Soldier and Topographical Engineer, 1861–1865

M. Jane Johansson

• Publisher: Univ Tennessee Press
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9781621908616
• eBook ISBN: 9781621908623
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: History

Lyman Gibson Bennett (1832–1904) had a curious mind and a keen sense of humor. He had an engineer's mentality and a poet's grasp of language, except for spelling. As a Union soldier, Bennett saw extensive service in the Trans-Mississippi Theater. A writer of considerable energy and intelligence, Bennett's wartime diaries recount his diverse and wide-ranging military record, stretching geographically from the prairies of Illinois to the Rocky Mountains, while a postwar account details, among other things, his labors to recruit "Mountain Feds" in the Ozarks.This volume provides the perspective of an individual who was both a topographical engineer—with extensive experience that spanned the country from Arkansas to the Overland Trail—and a common soldier. As a member of the Thirty-Sixth Illinois Infantry, Bennett provided one of the most detailed contemporary accounts of the pivotal Battle of Pea Ridge, March 7–8, 1862. By December 1863, Bennett was promoted to first lieutenant in the newly formed Fourth Arkansas Cavalry (US) and wrote an invaluable first-person account of guerrilla fighting in the Ozark mountains. Readers will delight in Bennett's witty descriptions of the ankles (and even higher!) of ladies as they gathered their skirts to trek through the mud; his sometimes-cutting words about his fellow hospital patients; and his wry comments on that "exclusively southern institution, " the chigger. New Fields of Adventure will prove useful to scholars of the Ozarks, landscape studies, and the Civil War in the West.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Foreword | Michael P. Gray
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Editorial Method
• 1. Before the War
• 2. Off to War: August 21, 1861–September 23, 1861
• 3. Trip to Rolla, Missouri: September 24, 1861–September 29, 1861
• 4. Camp Life in Rolla: September 30, 1861–October 13, 1861
• 5. Engineering Work in Rolla: October 14, 1861–November 3, 1861
• 6. Surveying Work in Rolla: November 4, 1861–December 15, 1861
• 7. St. Louis: December 16, 1861–January 12, 1862
• 8. Work in St. Louis: January 13, 1862–January 30, 1862
• 9. Furlough: January 31, 1862–February 8, 1862
• 10. Return to St. Louis and Rolla: February 9, 1862–February 15, 1862
• 11. To Springfield: February 16, 1862–February 22, 1862
• 12. From Springfield to Pea Ridge: February 23, 1862–March 5, 1862
• 13. The Pea Ridge Campaign: March 6, 1862–April 4, 1862
• 14. Pea Ridge to the Mississippi River: April 5, 1862–August 17, 1862
• 15. Recruiting in Dixie, Part One: November 26, 1862–July 5, 1863
• 16. Recruiting in Dixie, Part Two: July 6, 1863–November 13, 1864
• 17. Mapping in Kansas and Missouri: January 1, 1865–February 14, 1865
• 18. Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to Fort Kearney, Nebraska Territory: February 15, 1865–March 3, 1865
• 19. Fort Kearney to Denver: March 4, 1865–March 22, 1865
• 20. A Tour of Colorado Gold Mines: March 23, 1865–March 24, 1865
• 21. To Fort Laramie and Back to Denver: March 25, 1865–April 15, 1865
• 22. After the War
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index