After the Civil War broke out in 1861, Edward White enlisted in the Confederate army. Little is known of his activities other than that he served as a captain on the staff of Brigadier General Thomas L. Clingman, a participant in, among others, the Wilderness campaign. After the war White studied law in Winchester, Virginia, and was admitted to the bar in 1866. At about the same time he married Gertrude Douglas of Charles Town, West Virginia; the couple had six children. In i8jo White was appointed a judge in Clarke County, Virginia; but two years later he moved to St. Louis, where he resumed his law practice. He was a police-court justice there from 1885 to 1888. On March 31, 1888, he died of tuberculosis.