The Cumberland Chapter was organized in the year 1857. During that year the Trustees of the University of Alabama, at Tuscaloosa, Alabama, abolished all Greek letter fraternities existing at that institution, thereby compelling the Alabama Chapter to suspend its functions. Thereupon two Brothers of the latter Chapter, who were at the time members of the Law School of the Cumberland University, at Lebanon, Tennessee, by authority of the Chapter and upon advice of the graduate association, organized the Cumberland Chapter, and transferred to it the charter and records of their own Chapter. The legal status of the newly organized Chapter was not, however, fully settled until the next convention, and its list of membership first appeared in the catalogue of 1860.

At the breaking out of the great war between the States in 1861, the University, then one of the oldest, most celebrated and flourishing institutions in the South, was deserted by its students, nearly all of whom enlisted in the Confederate service; and its portals were closed. The college buildings sub served only the purpose of barracks for soldiers of both contending armies, and the University did not reopen until after the war.

The Cumberland Chapter suspended its active functions in 1861, and this fact was recognized by the Convention in 1863.