Ambrose Hundley Sevier. His views were generally of a disunionist version, and he was not popular with many Senate members. During an 1850 debate over Southern rights, he physically attacked Mississippi Senator Henry Foote. He discovered soon after his return to Little Rock, Arkansas, that his views were not popular at home, either. In 1852 he opposed the decision of sending Commodore Perry to open Japan to international trade on grounds that the leaders of that country did not offend U.S. interests by refusing to open their country to international trade.[4] Borland resigned from the United States Senate in 1853 and was appointed as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary (Nicaragua)
.
Immediately after his arrival in
William Marcy. While leaving Greytown in May, 1854, Borland interfered with the local arrest of an American citizen. A crowd had gathered, and a bottle was thrown which hit Borland in the face. Enraged, he reported the incident to the U.S. president, who promptly dispatched a gunboat, and demanded an apology. When none was given, Greytown was bombarded and destroyed.[citation needed
]
Borland returned to Little Rock in October 1854, and resumed his medical practice and operation of his
At the start of the American Civil War, Borland was appointed as a commander of Arkansas
Henry M. Rector, and ordered to lead the expedition that seized Fort Smith, Arkansas, in the first days of the war, despite the fact that Arkansas had not yet seceded. By the time Borland and his forces arrived in Fort Smith, the Federal troops had already departed, and there were no shots fired. He was replaced as commander at the Arkansas Secession convention less than a month later, but he was able to obtain a position as a commander for Northeast Arkansas. For a time in 1861 he commanded the depot at Pitman's Ferry, near Pocahontas, Arkansas, responsible for troop deployments and supplies. Borland's only son with his third wife, George Godwin Borland, had joined the Confederate States Army despite being only 16 years of age, and would later be killed in action. Borland's first wife, Huldah G. Wright (1809–1837), bore him a son Harold who served in the Confederate States Army as a major, assigned to the Eastern Sub-district of Texas of the Trans-Mississippi Department.[5]
While in command of northern Arkansas, he ordered an
embargo of goods to end price speculation, which was rescinded by Governor Rector. Borland protested that a governor could not countermand an order from a Confederate official, but in January 1862 his order was countermanded by the Confederate States Secretary of WarJudah P. Benjamin. In declining health and resenting that embarrassment, Borland resigned from further service to the Confederacy in June, 1862, moving to Dallas County, Arkansas. He died before the war's end, in Harris County, Texas. His burial place is in the old City Cemetery, Houston, Texas
.
Personal life
Borland married three times, first in 1831 to Huldah Wright, who died in 1837, and with whom he had two sons. He then married Eliza Buck Hart in 1839, but she died in 1842, with no offspring. In 1843 following his second wife's death, Borland moved to Little Rock, where he founded the
slander
published against him. In 1845 Borland met Mary Isabel Melbourne. They married that year and had three children.