This monument was originally in honor of Edmund Kirby Smith, who was an officer for the Confederates. The original plaques were removed and replaced with plaques honoring the Universities humble beginning. On the front is a plaque with Sewanee's motto and on the back is the timeline (see below).
Plaque Text:
1857:
On July 4, a group of bishops, clergy, and laymen, nearly all of them slaveholders, gathered with more than 500 others on Lookout Mountain to share their vision for a great Episcopal university. While serving the particular needs of a region built on the institution of slavery, this university would, in founding Bishop James H. Otey's words, "furnish to this great Republic the truest men, the truest Christians, and the truest patriots, an enlightened and virtuous class of citizens."
1866:
After a Civil War whos casualties included the University's endowment, most of its founders, and the institution of slavery, Bishop Charles Quintard of Tennessee began to reimagine the Southern university planned nine years earlier. On March 22, not far from this spot, he and a small gathering of well-wishers, including two priest, several workmen, and a University trustee, erected a simple wooden cross to announce the refounding of the University of the South.
1868:
Racing to meet the deadline imposed by the Sewanee Mining Company, whos 1858 gift of land had been conditional on the University opening within ten years, Bishop Quintard raised the funds necessary to open the doors at last. A convocation ceremony on September 18, attended by four faculty and nine students, rededicated the University of the South to the best of its original purposes, "the cultivation of true religion, learning, and virtue."
2018:
This monument, commemorating the founding, the refounding, and the opening of the university, has been raised to inspire Sewanee's sons and daughters to live by the ideals of the University's motto, Ecce Quam Bonum. Dedicated 150 years after the matriculation of those first nine students, it occupies what was once the site of a memorial to Edmund Kirby-Smith, a Confederate general and Sewanee professor. It is thus a fitting reminder to the Sewanee community - a more diverse and inclusive one than any of the founders could have envisioned - to carry on its work of imagining and reimagining a great university. It calls us to ensure that Sewanee continues to grow into a stronger and truer version of itself, meanwhile serving the South, the nation, and the world.
Dedicated September 23, 2018