SAE actually was never part of any other organization. When we were founded on March 9, 1856 at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, there were three other fraternities on campus at the time: Delta Kappa Epsilon, Alpha Delta Phi and Phi Gamma Delta (Fiji). All eight of our Founders received bids from one or more of those chapters and our chief Founder, Noble Leslie DeVotie, received bids from all three. The Founders wanted from the beginning to design their own fraternity and the intention was always to be national although we were restricted originally to the South. After the Civil War only one chapter of SAE was still active (Washington City Rho in Wash., DC). During the effort to rebuild, each of Delta Tau Delta, Beta Theta Pi and Alpha Tau Omega attempted to get SAE to merge with them and all three were refused. So the history of Sigma Alpha Epsilon is actually quite the opposite of what you (Consul_2k) heard. We were founded not through a split from any other organization, but through the opposition of joining other organizations and the intention to be original from the start.
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