Preston Leslie

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Leslie began his political career by being elected as a Whig to the Kentucky House of Representatives in 1844. He was defeated for a seat in the state Senate in 1846 by a single vote. He continued serving in the House until 1850, when he won election to the Senate representing Monroe and Barren counties. He then served in the Senate until 1855. In the 1850s, the Whig Party gradually faded in Kentucky, and Leslie became a Democrat. He declined nominations for a seats in the United States Congress and on the Kentucky Court of Appeals, preferring instead to work on his farm. In 1859, he moved to Glasgow, Kentucky, in Barren County.

By 1861, Leslie had built up a prosperous estate and added a plot of land in Texas to his holdings in Kentucky. In December of that year, he and his eldest son traveled to the property with 26 slaves and a large part of the family's possessions. After establishing his household, Leslie returned to Kentucky and left the Texas estate in the care of his son.

Leslie's feelings were mixed on the issues central to the Civil War. Known as a "strong Union man" prior to the war, his sympathies switched to the southern cause once the war began. Nevertheless, he believed the South should solve its differences with the North through diplomatic means, and did not favor the idea of secession. He kept a low political profile and refused military service for either side. He returned to the state Senate from 1867 to 1871, serving as president of that body from 1869 to 1871.

On February 13, 1871, Governor John W. Stevenson resigned his post to accept a seat in the U.S. Senate. Stevenson had ascended to the governorship on the death of John L. Helm, and had no lieutenant governor. As president of the Senate, Leslie was the ex-officio lieutenant governor, and next in line to succeed Stevenson. A gubernatorial election was already scheduled later in 1871, and Leslie was among several nominees put forward by the Democrats. Because of Leslie's opposition to the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, his candidacy was opposed by Henry Watterson, founder of the powerful Louisville Courier-Journal. Despite this, Leslie emerged from a field of Democratic candidates that included future governors John Y. Brown and J. Proctor Knott and former Confederate governor Richard Hawes. John G. Carlisle was chosen as Leslie's running mate, and was declared by one commentator to be "by odds, the ablest man on the ticket". Leslie's opposition to the Southern Railroad bill while serving in the state senate proved a liability with some voters in his own party. Because of his southern sympathies, he was also opposed by the more progressive "New Departure" wing of his party. Nevertheless, he enjoyed support from the Bourbon Democrats in the state, as well as the state's tobacco interests and the Louisville and Nashville Railroad.

During the campaign, Leslie's opponent Republican John Marshall Harlan was blasted as a "political weathercock" for having changed his stance on many issues. In one joint debate, Leslie quoted an antebellum speech wherein Harlan had called the Republican platform "revolutionary, and if carried out, would result in the destruction of our free government." Harlan admitted his inconsistent stands, declaring that he would rather be right than consistent. Meanwhile, Leslie began moving closer to the "New Departure" wing of his party during the course of the campaign. Ultimately, Leslie's supporters deemed him "sober, conservative, and safe", and this perception enabled him to defeat Harlan by a considerable margin in the first election in which blacks were allowed to vote.

Leslie laid out an aggressive legislative agenda in his inaugural address to the General Assembly on September 5, 1871, but legislators were more concerned with passing the Southern Railroad bill that would create a connection between the railroads of Cincinnati, Ohio, and those of the Southern United States. The line would pass through central Kentucky, opening up trade to the region. It would be funded primarily by capital from Ohio, and would provide competition to the Louisville and Nashville Railroad's monopoly in the state. Though Leslie wasn't particularly supportive of the bill, he refused to veto it because of the potential economic benefits to the state. Leslie was also faced with the issue of post-war violence by the Ku Klux Klan. The legislature had refused to pass a law against mob violence in 1871. In his address to the legislature on December 6, 1871, Leslie endorsed legislation that made it illegal to write or post threatening notices and to band together and wear disguises. This proposal enjoyed favorable public opinion, and was passed during the legislature's next session. With the railroad and violence issues resolved, Governor Leslie urged the legislature to improve the status of blacks in the state, including the creation of an educational system for blacks and the approval of the testimony of blacks in the state's courts. He commissioned a new geological survey, appointing native Kentuckian Nathaniel Southgate Shaler to head the work. An advocate of the temperance movement, he secured additional regulations on the sale of liquor. Also during Leslie's tenure, the penal system was improved.

Devout Baptists and teetotalers, Governor and Mrs. Leslie did not serve alcohol in the governor's mansion and were given a silver service set at the expiration of his term by the Good Templars of Kentucky for their charity to the needy. Following his term in office, Leslie was elected to serve on the Glasgow circuit court, a position he held for six years, beginning in 1881. He failed in a re-election bid in 1886 by four votes.

In 1887, President Grover Cleveland appointed Leslie to be the Territorial Governor of Montana. Cleveland made the appointment on the recommendation of John Marshall Harlan, Leslie's opponent in the Kentucky gubernatorial election of 1871, who was now serving as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Leslie soon ran afoul of the local press, who labeled him the "Coldwater Governor" for his stands in favor of temperance. The press's opinion of him further dimmed when he pardoned a prostitute convicted of grand larceny because the penitentiary was not equipped to accommodate women. He urged the territorial legislature to enact fiscal reforms and improve facilities for the insane and the incarcerated, but he was no match for the political machinery in Montana Territory. His 1889 pocket veto of an appointment bill supported by the legislature was the final straw; under pressure from Republicans, President Benjamin Harrison replaced Leslie as territorial governor.

Meanwhile, in Kentucky, the state treasurer, "Honest Dick" Tate, had absconded with nearly $250,000 of the state's money in 1888. During the investigation that followed, it was discovered that Leslie, along with several other state officials, had procured personal loans from the state treasury through Tate.

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