Colonel John E. Bennett helped raise three regiments of Illinois volunteers and rose to colonel of the 75th Illinois Volunteer Infantry by December 1862, commanding a brigade in the Army of the Cumberland. He fought at Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, and through the Atlanta Campaign, surviving the war. Postwar, Bennett practiced law in Arkansas, served on its Supreme Court, and later became a South Dakota Supreme Court justice, dying just before a new term in 1893.