While researching the Yarnell branch of my family, I came across an amazing piece of history. I had long known that the Yarnell (also spelled Yarnall) family is well-documented from colonial America to the present.

Philip and Francis Yarnall came to America in 1683 to be part of William Penn’s new colony of Pennsylvania. Philip Yarnall is my 7th great-grandfather.

Recently, I thought to look at eBay for items related to my family history. One particular item caught my eye—a book titled Forty Years of Friendship: Correspondence of Lord Coleridge and Ellis Yarnall.

Ellis Yarnall was a great great grandson of Philip—I will have to do more work on the family tree to calculate our exact genealogical relationship.

Ellis was very well-traveled and was, truly, a citizen of the world. His friend, Lord Coleridge, was an English lawyer, judge and Liberal politician. He held the posts, in turn, of Solicitor General for England and Wales, Attorney General for England and Wales, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas and Lord Chief Justice of England.

I purchased Forty Years of Friendship, thinking there might be an interesting bit or two of family details, but I’ve found it to be an incredible piece of history. The letters between Coleridge and Yarnall provide a window into the thoughts of two prominent gentleman about the events of their times—and they contain ideas very relevant to the present day.

The book was published in 1911, about six years after the death of Ellis. It was edited by Charlton Yarnall, Ellis’s son. (Charlton is a fascinating character himself, and I may write about him down the road.) The book opens with letters dated in 1856, as the two men discuss issues of race and slavery.

Regarding slavery, Coleridge states: “It has always seemed to me that there are peculiarities in the question which a foreigner cannot understand. I have heard Americans, with whom on every other subject I seemed to agree generally in feeling and principle, use language on this which filled me with horror, and I am sincerely persuaded that there must be something more than a foreigner can see, on the surface of the question, to explain the intense disgust which very good and gentle people among you feel for negroes and negro blood.”

Coleridge does not express support for immediate abolition of slavery, though, as “Southern men cannot be expected to submit patiently to absolute ruin, and to what I suppose would be in many cases confiscation.” He continues: “But what puzzles me is to hear the institution, pure and simple, defended, and that nothing seems to be done, or attempted to mitigate its iniquities or prepare the way for gradual abolition.”

Coleridge’s next letter brings up the presidential election of 1856, a time when tensions were running quite high in the buildup to the Civil War: “At Washington one would expect some, at least, of the best men in America to be met together and the prevailing tone of the place ought to be decorous and gentlemanlike…I really feel that either we do not in the least understand America, or else that what is bad and ruffianly has a greater ascendancy there than any true friend of liberty can think of without sorrow and mortification.”

Ellis Yarnall replies: “I rejoice that you feel interest in the great struggle in which we are engaged in this country…You do well then to watch the present contest, and your sympathy with those of us who are struggling for the success of liberal principles, is well bestowed. I have given myself to the cause with ardour, and there are many around me who are like-minded. Here in Philadelphia there is a great deal to be done; we are in one sense a pro-slavery community, for the influence of the money-getting spirit is very much opposed to the love of a wise liberty. Then, too, people of Southern birth are among us, and there have been marriage connections and there is neighbourhood—a sort of border feeling. And, as you say, timid and refined people are averse to entering into what they call politics.”

Yarnall then gets more specific: “In regard to this Slavery question the South is now greatly excited: they are a fiery people and at present are not in a condition to listen to reason. Their leaders have told them the North is refusing them their rights, and the story is believed.” Later Yarnall notes that a Southern leader had advised his constituents that if Mr. Fremont wins the election, then Southerners should “march to Washington and seize the Archives and the Treasury.”

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