Yerger was born on November 22, 1816 in Lebanon, Tennessee, the eighth of the eleven children of Edwin Michael and Margaret (Shall) Yerger, who had removed from Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. Several of his nine brothers, especially George Shall and Jacob Shall Yerger, subsequently became prominent as lawyers in Tennessee and Mississippi.
Education
In 1833 Yerger graduated from the University of Nashville, and he was admitted to the bar before reaching his majority.
Career
Within the year of his marriage, the young lawyer removed to Jackson, Mississippi, where he soon made a favorable impression. His dominant traits were diligence, mental strength, and courtesy. His professional success was so great that he attained a practice reputed for some years to be the largest and most lucrative in the state.
His political success would doubtless have been greater had not his convictions frequently led him to run counter to public opinion. He was a stanch member of the minority Whig party. Although he was an associate justice of the supreme court of Mississippi from 1851 to 1853, he failed to be re-elected because he delivered an opinion, which he knew would be most unpopular, fixing on the state full responsibility for the payment of the Mississippi Union Bank bonds. Also, he opposed the secession movement in a notable speech before the legislature in 1861, and in 1863 he and William L. Sharkey sought to bring Mississippi back to the Union, believing that the fall of Vicksburg had determined the course of the war.
Yet in spite of the divergence between his views and those of the masses, the latter showed their confidence in him by keeping him in the state legislature during the Civil War; before its end he had been elevated to the presidency of the Senate. Immediately after the war Charles Clark, the Confederate governor, sent Yerger and Sharkey to inquire from President Johnson the terms on which Mississippi could re-enter the Union. Although they were not received as official commissioners from Mississippi, they had a satisfactory conference as private citizens. Upon returning, Yerger made a report of his mission to the Mississippi constitutional convention of 1865, of which he was a member. This report, well salted with conservative advice, has been judged as the ablest speech before that body. Immediately after he delivered it an ordinance was adopted declaring slavery destroyed in Mississippi. A few months later Gov. Benjamin G. Humphreys sent him on another mission to the President, and in July 1866 he was selected as a delegate to represent Mississippi in the Philadelphia convention of supporters of Andrew Johnson. During the period of congressional Reconstruction his advice was of course not sought by those in power in Mississippi. Before the supremacy of the native whites was re-established he was dead.
Achievements
Connections
On May 23, 1837, Yerger was married to Malvina Hogan Rucks. They had twelve children.