11 Aug. 1811–31 Jan. 1864
In 1831, Borland was an officer in a Murfreesboro cavalry company that took part in the suppression of Nat Turner's Revolt in nearby Southampton County, Va. Again Borland's name was before the public when he and members of his detachment accused members of another detachment of robbing the bodies of murdered black people. This theft of bodies violated the property rights of the enslavers during the period. At a July fourth celebration near Murfreesboro in 1831, Borland was one of several orators of the day.
In 1836, Borland went to Philadelphia for medical training; he practiced briefly after that in Virginia as a dentist and later practiced as a physician. A monograph he published in Arkansas in 1845, entitled The Milk Sickness in Humans, or the Trimbles in Animals, is thought to have been the first scientific work published in that state. Previously, however, he had become active in journalism. His first journalistic venture is said to have been the founding of a newspaper at Portsmouth, Va., probably in the early 1830s. In 1839 he became editor of the Memphis (Tenn.) Western World and
In the spring of 1861, prior to the secession of Arkansas from the Union, Borland organized a body of troops and took possession of Fort Smith for the Confederacy. He afterward became colonel of the Third Arkansas Cavalry, a unit he personally recruited. He died while on service in Texas in 1864.
Borland was married three times: to Mrs. Huldah Wright of Suffolk, Va., by whom he had two sons; to a Mrs. Hunt of Tennessee; and to Mary J. Melbourne of Little Rock, by whom he had another son and two daughters.