"The writer, and others, perhaps, will remember his modest reference to his fondness for reading while a boy, in using "the first money he could command" to subscribe for the Richmond Advocate, which he subsequently edited with so much ability.

[4] In March 1862 he was appointed Superintendent of the Soldier's Tract Association by the Virginia Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.

Its operations steadily increased to the close of the war; and besides the dissemination of millions of pages of excellent religious reading, with thousands of Bibles and Testaments, two semi-monthly papers were issued, The Soldier's Paper, at Richmond, and The Army and Navy Herald, at Macon, Georgia, 40,000 copies of which were circulated every month throughout the armies.

Bennett, at London, England when hostilities concluded, was in the midst of collecting Bibles and religious tracts donated to the Southern Army.

His 1877 Narrative of the Great Revival Which Prevailed in the Southern Armies During the Late Civil War Between The States of the Federal Union resulted from his experience as a Confederate chaplain.

Bennett self-published The Great Red Dragon: An Appeal to Plain People on the Evils and Dangers of the Liquor Traffic in 1885.