The first convocation of the University of…

The first convocation of the University of the South is held on September 18, 1868, with nine students and four faculty members present.

Confederate hero Robert E. Lee had been offered the position of vice-chancellor, but he declined, choosing instead the same position at Washington College in his beloved Virginia.

The Right Reverend Charles Todd Quintard, Vice Chancellor of the University (Second Bishop of Tennessee and "Chaplain of the Confederacy") had attended the first Lambeth Conference in England (1867) and had received financial support from clergy and laity of the Church of England, which has enabled rebuilding of the school.

Quintard is known as the "Re-Founder" of the University of the South.

Delegates from ten southern dioceses of the Episcopal Church—Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas—had been led up Monteagle Mountain by Bishop Leonidas Polk for the founding of their denominational college for the region on July 4, 1857.

The six-ton marble cornerstone, laid on October 10, 1860, and consecrated by Bishop Polk, had been blown up in 1863 by Union soldiers from an Illinois regiment; many of the pieces had been collected and kept as keepsakes by the soldiers.

A few had been donated back to the university, and a large fragment will eventually be installed in a wall of All Saints' Chapel.

Several figures later prominent in the Confederacy, notably Bishop-General Leonidas Polk, Bishop Stephen Elliott, and Bishop James Hervey Otey, are significant founders of what is to become The University of the South.

Generals Edmund Kirby Smith, Josiah Gorgas and Francis A. Shoup are prominent in the university's postbellum revival and continuance.

Because of the damage and disruptions during the Civil War, construction had come to a temporary halt.

In 1866, building had resumed, and this date is sometimes used as the re-founding of the university and the year from which it has maintained continuous operations (though official materials and anniversary celebrations still use 1857).