According to White's own recollections, the advent of the Free Soil movement in 1848 made him determined to become a journalist so that he could fight against slavery. In 1853 he accepted a position on the Chicago Journal and reported the renewed sectional strife caused by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. His marriage in 1856 to Martha Root, daughter of a prominent abolitionist, encouraged his activist career. (They had no children.) As assistant secretary for the National Kansas Committee, he helped arm John Brown (1800-1859) and other militant free soilers in Kansas.

DOLES, George Pierce, soldier, b. in Milledgeville, Ga., 14 May, 1830 ; d. near Cold Harbor, Va., 2 June, 1864. He was educated in Milledgeville, and at the beginning of the civil war was captain of a militia company called the "Baldwin Blues." His services and those of his command were at once offered to the governor of Georgia and accepted. He was made a captain in the 4th Georgia infantry, and in May, 1862, became colonel of his regiment. He followed the fortunes of the army of Northern Virginia, and at the battle of Gettysburg succeeded to the command of a brigade.