Trained as a physician and ordained an Episcopal priest, Charles Todd Quintard (1824-1898) was born, raised and educated in the North. He migrated to the South to pursue a medical career but was inspired by the bishop of Tennessee to serve the church. In May 1861, Quintard joined the Confederate 1st Tennessee Infantry Regiment as its chaplain and during the maelstrom of the Civil War kept a diary if his experiences. He later penned a memoir, which was published posthumously in 1905. With thoughtful editing and annotating, Sam Davis Elliott combines a previously unpublished portion of the diary with Quintard's memoir in Doctor Quintard, Chaplain C.S.A. and Second Bishop of Tennessee.
Quintard was present during the early fighting in Virginia, marched into Kentucky with Braxton Bragg, and attended to the wounded at Murfreesboro and Chickamauga. He met such diverse personages as Robert E. Lee and Federal Major General James H. Wilson; prayed with Leonidas Polk and John Bell Hood; and shared a bed once with Nathan Bedford Forrest. Throughout the war, he organized hospitals and relief efforts, filled in as a parish priest, and served as chaplain at large of the Army of Tennessee.
These interesting and lively war-year remembrances of one of the Confederacy's most exceptional characters shed new light on the little-known western theater's military, civilian, and religious fronts.
