White was born at Colebrook, New Hampshire. His father was a physician. In 1837 his family moved to Beloit, Wisconsin, and White graduated at Beloit College in 1853. In 1854, he became city editor of the Chicago Evening Journal. In 1856-57 he served as assistant secretary of the National Kansas Committee. As a reporter for the Chicago Tribune he accompanied Abraham Lincoln in 1858 in his campaign against Stephen A. Douglas, his account being published in Herndon's Life of Lincoln. As a result, he became friends with Lincoln and Henry Villard. Villard was covering the debates for the New-Yorker Staats-Zeitung. In 1861, he became the Washington correspondent of the Tribune.

From 1864 to 1874 he was editor in chief and one of the owners of the Chicago Tribune. He left the Tribune due to ill health. In 1877, he joined Villard to work successively in two railway firms, and then in 1881, when Villard bought the New York Evening Post and The Nation, White, along with Carl Schurz and Edwin L. Godkin, managed the enterprise. Schurz left in 1883, and Godkin assumed the role of editor in chief. In 1899, White succeeded Godkin as editor in chief, and he held that position till his retirement in 1903. In 1909, he was appointed to the New York State Commission on Speculation and Commodities. He was widely known for his able discussions of currency and banking problems.

He was struck by an automobile in New York City, and died shortly thereafter.

Original work

• Money and Banking illustrated by American History (1895; fifth edition, revised, 1914)
• Life of Lyman Trumbull (1913)

Translations

• Appian, Roman History (two volumes, 1899), translated from Greek

Editor

• Frederic Bastiat, Sophismes économiques (Chicago, 1869)
• Luigi Cossa, Scienza delle finanze (New York, 1888)