A bronze statue of Edward Douglas White is a local landmark in the French quarter of New Orleans. The statue was dedicated on April 8, 1926. At that time, Confederate veterans still wearing their gray uniforms, stood about the scaffolding according to the Times Picayune Newspaper.
Edward Douglas White was a soldier in the Confederate army. He was born in 1845 in the family’s plantation home in Thibodaux, Louisiana. He was one of three ex Confederate soldiers to serve on the Supreme Court. During the war, he was taken prisoner in New Orleans in 1863 and released from confinement at the end of the war in 1965.
Professor Paul R. Baier, of the LSU Law Center, is the author of a play about Justice White. It is entitled Father Chief Justice E.D. White and the Constitution, a Play.[1] In the play, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and Chief Justice White exchange roses on Constitution Day, September 17. This also happens to be the anniversary of the battle of Antietam where Justice Holmes was shot through the back of the neck when serving as a union officer. Also as depicted in the play, in 1918, Holmes and White, as members of the Supreme Court, upheld the Selective Service Act of 1917 and, more generally, upheld conscription in the United States. Thus, two Justices, who had been enemies, served side by side on the United States Supreme Court.
[1] Paul R. Baier, “Father Chief Justice”: E. D. White and the Constitution, A Play, 58 La. L. Rev. (1998)