National History
Sigma Alpha Epsilon is the largest national fraternity in terms of initiated members, boasting over 300,000 since its founding. Sigma Alpha Epsilon was founded on March 9, 1856 at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. There were eight founding fathers: Noble Leslie Devotie, Nathan Elams Cockrell, John Barrat Rudulph, John Webb Kerr, 
Samuel Marion Dennis, Wade Hampton Foster, Abner Edwin Patton, and Thomas Chappell Cook. Devotie was the leader of this inital membership and responsible for the name, the grip, and much of the ritual.
The American Civil war marked a trying period for Sigma Alpha Epsilon, with a majority of the near 400 members fighting in the war. Quite a few of those SAE's lost their lives during the war, one of which was Noble Leslie Devotie. Of the fifteen chapters that had been founded by the start of the war, the only one that was able to survive the war was the Washington City Rho chapter, founded at what is now George Washington University. After the war, the founding of a few new chapters, as well as the revival of a few others, began the regrowth of the fraternity.
Two very important members of the fraternity were Harry Bunting and William Levere, who both put in an incredible amount of work to raise the standards of chapters across the country, increase membership, and help the fraternity become a stable force on college campuses. The Levere Memorial Temple was built as a national headquarters and was dedicated in Levere's name in 1930.
In 1935, John O. Moseley held the first Leadership School, now known as the John O. Moseley Leadership School, which continues to be an important annual fraternity event to this day.
Sigma Alpha Epsilon adopted the True Gentleman as its official creed sometime in the 1930s. The True Gentleman was first published in the Baltimore Sun as the winner of a contest to best define a true gentleman. The author, and winner of the contest, was John Walter Wayland, who was initiated posthumously into Sigma Alpha Epsilon at the 66th annual Leadership School.
The True Gentleman
The True Gentleman is the man whose conduct proceeds from good will and an acute sense of propriety and whose self-control is equal to all emergencies; who does not make the poor man conscious of his poverty, the obscure man of his obscurity, or any man of his inferiority or deformity; who is himself humbled if necessity compels him to humble another; who does not flatter wealth, cringe before power, or boast of his own possessions or achievements; who speaks with frankness but always with sincerity and sympathy; whose deed follows his word; who thinks of the rights and feelings of others rather than his own; and who appears well in any company; a man with whom honor is sacred and virtue safe.
-John Walter Wayland, 1899