Alexander Stewart was born in Tennessee. After attending and graduating from West Point, Stewart became a professor of mathematics, serving at Cumberland and NashvilleUniversities from 1845 until 1861. In that year, at the outset of the Civil War, he joined the Tennessee militia as a major of artillery. A rather unlikely background for the man who attained the highest rank of any Tennessean to serve in the Confederate Army.
Stewart solidified a reputation as a fighting general in 1863 and 1864, while serving in the Confederate Army of Tennessee in places such as Chickamauga, Atlanta, Franklin and Nashville. After the War, Stewart was an insurance executive in St. Louis for a time. He accepted a professorship at the University of Mississippi at Oxford, and eventually became the University’s President. In his later years, General Stewart lived from time to time in St. Louis with a son, which is the reason he was buried in St. Louis’ Bellefontaine Cemetery when he passed away in 1908.
(reprinted with permission, Friend and Foe Alike: A Tour Guide to Missouri’s Civil War)