The church grew very slowly. The state was still in a frontier condition. The inhabitants were democratic, and were already members for the most part of the Methodist and Baptist churches. What aristocracy there was belonged to the Presbyterian Church. There was no American bishop in the Episcopal Church to consecrate candidates for the ministry. They were forced to go to England for the laying-on of hands. Again, the War of 1812 had further intensified the prejudice against the English church. Rev. Otey was a persistent worker, and after his consecration in 1834 he began to lay the foundation for educational and religious expansion of this church. Mercer Hall, a school for boys, was opened in his home in 1836. Columbia Female Institute was founded in the same year, and preparations were begun to found a university the same year, but were not successful until 1857, when the University of the South was established in the Cumberland Mountains about ten miles from Winchester at Sewanee, Tenn. Bishop Otey became its first president. By 1844 there were thirteen resident clergymen in the state besides Rev. Otey. The number of communicants had grown from 117 in 1834 to 400.[169] In 1860, the last year of the Journal of the Convention for the South until after the war, there were 27 members of the clergy, 26 parishes, and 1500 communicants. The Episcopal Church in Tennessee was practically synonymous with Bishop Otey, who directed and controlled its policy. He owned a plantation out from Memphis and a number of slaves. He was a typical Southern, Christian slaveholder. He believed that patriarchal slavery was a great institution for the negro. He felt that the North misunderstood the institution, and was in its agitation doing irreparable damage to the nation and the South. Writing to the Northern clergymen, May 17, 1861, he said: As to your coming South, let me just here state, for all, that you wholly misapprehend the spirit of our people. We ask not one thing of the North which has not been secured to us by the Constitution and laws since they were established and enacted, and which has been granted to us until within a few years past. We demand no sacrifice nor the surrender of Northern rights and privileges. The party that elected Mr. Lincoln proclaimed uncompromising hostility to the institution of slavery—an institution which existed here, and has done so from its beginning, in its patriarchal character. We feel ourselves under the most solemn obligations to take care of, and to provide for, these people who cannot provide for themselves. Nearly every free-soil state has prohibited them from settling in their territory. Where are they to go?