(Reprint)The next time you are in Alma and want to take an interesting historical pause, go to the Alma Fine Arts Center, duck behind it, find Mulberry Street and go approximately six blocks south on the narrow street to the Alma City Cemetery.
There buried beneath a simple Confederate States of America tombstone lies the remains of the aptly named Napoleon Bonaparte Burrow, one of a number of brigadier generals appointed by the Arkansas Military Board during the Civil War.
Burrow was born in 1818 in Bedford County, Tennessee, the son of Banks Mitchum and Mary (Blanchard) Burrow. His father was a farmer in Bedford and Carroll counties.
Entering Nashville University in 1836, the young Burrow graduated from the law department in 1839 and commenced a legal career. He settled in Huntingdon in Carroll County, and practiced law there until the outbreak of the Mexican War.
A second lieutenant of the 2nd Tennessee Volunteers, Burrow fought with great distinction in Scott's assault on Mexico City. After the war he settled in Arkansas, first in Jefferson County and later near Van Buren.
In both places he practiced law and was a substantial planter and slaveholder. Burrow was also active politically as a state senator from Jefferson County from 1851 to 1855, a Buchanan elector in 1856, and a delegate to both 1860 Democratic conventions.
Seven years before the Civil War broke out Burrow married Francis Juliet Crutchfield on July 19, 1853 in LIttle Rock in the area now known as the Territorial Restoration. To that union was born three children--Banks M. was born in July 1858 and Charley (Chesley) Burrows was born around 1859, both in Arkansas. Charley died before the age of 11, and their third child, Elizabeth Burrows was born in May 1861, after the ourtbreak of hostilities.
By January, 1860, Burrow was a general in command of a brigade of Arkansas militia.
A prominent secessionist, Burrow was the candidate of the ultra-secessionist "Hindman" faction to the First Confederate Senate.
When Arkansas seceded, Burrow and his militia brigade (3rd Brigade, First Division) took over Fort Smith, capturing the federal garrison. His command was so criticized - one influential editor called his conduct there "extravagant and... pompously unmilitary" - that he was relieved after two weeks.
The Arkansas Military Board later appointed Burrow a post as a brigadier general and sent him to Springfield, Missouri, after the Battle of Wilson's Creek, to transfer the Arkansas militia there to regular Confederate command.
The militiamen, encouraged by their commander, Brigadier General N. B. Pearce, refused to transfer, and Burrow's mission ended a fiasco.
Burrow spent the rest of the war raising crops for the army.
Despite his ill-fated last command, Arkansas politicians retained confidence in Burrow's abilities and recommended to President Davis that he be appointed a Confederate general, a recommendation that Davis, beset by numerous petitions of a like nature, never acted upon.
After the war Burrow resumed his farming and legal careers in Van Buren.
In the latter he gained great notoriety, one contemporary stating that "as a criminal lawyer ... in the state, he stood at the head of his profession."
General Burrow died of pneumonia at Alma on May 23, 1880, while returning to Van Buren from a legal case.
He is buried in the Alma City Cemetery.