He tells with relish in his "Autobiography" of the attentions paid him by the students. As soon as they caught sight of him at the station they asked him if he were going to enter the University. Of course he was. They immediately proceeded to "rush" him, not discovering that he was the new Professor of History until he signed the hotel register. His students were often older than he was and his experiences were many, particularly when he had it out with one student whom he had sized up as a ring-leader in class disturbances. This man was always elaborately innocent when trouble was brewing, but the young professor was sure he was right in his suspicions as to the seat of the trouble. Finally he delivered an ultimatum: "I see either you or I must leave the University." The student pleaded not guilty but Professor White insisted, suggesting that the Regents might feel the same as he in the matter. After some diplomatic passages, in which the student seemed not unimpressed by the importance given him, he acknowledged that perhaps he had been a little foolish and suggested that they try to live together a little longer. He afterwards became a strong friend of the young teacher and later fell at the head of his brigade at Gettysburg.
The success with which Professor White and his contemporaries labored among their students is shown by his later statement that from among them came senators, congressmen, judges, professors, lawyers, heads of great business enterprises, and diplomats. One became his successor in the Professorship of History and later in the Presidency of Cornell, and a well-known American historian of his time. Another became his predecessor in the Embassy to Germany. Professor White left Ann Arbor in 1863, partly because of business interests, partly because of his election to the New York State Senate and the Presidency of Cornell University.
With these men as leaders Michigan boldly embarked on a series of departures from educational precedents. Though the time was not ripe for graduate study, its desirability had been recognized emphatically in the annual catalogues. In their class rooms several of the Faculty endeavored to do more than follow the accepted textbooks, through lectures, assigned readings, and exercises designed to develop the individual powers of each student. Professor White was particularly fertile in these expedients. The claims of comparatively new subjects, foreign to the traditional curriculum, were recognized in chairs of history, English literature, the modern languages, and above all the sciences, where true laboratory work was gradually introduced until Michigan had under Professor Douglas what was probably in its early years the largest chemical laboratory in any American university. The new scientific course, which was established within the Literary Department and not as a separate school, was particularly significant of the progressive spirit of this early Faculty. This came to be so well recognized that Dr. Angell remarked in his inaugural address that the drift of intelligent opinion had been for twenty years towards some of the positions early adopted by the University, such as elective studies and larger opportunities for the study of history, modern languages, and the natural sciences. He also took occasion to suggest that the University would always have to be in a measure dependent upon the alumni, since the Legislature would never become so generous in its appropriations as to make private gifts undesirable or unnecessary.