The University of the South is a private, coeducational liberal arts college located in Sewanee, Tennessee. It is owned by 28 southern dioceses of the Episcopal Church, and its School of Theology is an official seminary of the church. The campus (officially called "The Domain" or, affectionately, "The Mountain") consists of 13,000 acres of scenic mountain property atop the Cumberland Plateau, with the developed portion occupying about 1,000 acres.
On July 4, 1857, delegates from ten dioceses of the Episcopal Church — Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas — were led up Monteagle Mountain by Bishop Leonidas Polk for the founding of their denominational college for the region.
The six-ton marble cornerstone, laid on October 10, 1860, and consecrated by Bishop Polk, was blown up in 1863 by Union soldiers from an Illinois regiment; many of the pieces were collected and kept as keepsakes by the soldiers. A few were donated back to the university, and a large fragment was eventually installed in a wall of All Saints' Chapel.
