Preston Leslie

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.[6] A gubernatorial election was already scheduled later in 1871, and Leslie was among several nominees put forward by the Democrats.[7] 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.[6] 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.[7] 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".[7] Leslie's opposition to the Southern Railroad bill while serving in the state senate proved a liability with some voters in his own party.[7] Because of his southern sympathies, he was also opposed by the more progressive "New Departure" wing of his party.[7] 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.[8]

During the campaign, Leslie's opponent Republican John Marshall Harlan was blasted as a "political weathercock" for having changed his stance on many issues.[9] 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."[9] Harlan admitted his inconsistent stands, declaring that he would rather be right than consistent.[9] Meanwhile, Leslie began moving closer to the "New Departure" wing of his party during the course of the campaign.[10] 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.[6]

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.[11] Leslie was also faced with the issue of post-war violence by the Ku Klux Klan.[12] The legislature had refused to pass a law against mob violence in 1871.[12] 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.[12][13] This proposal enjoyed favorable public opinion, and was passed during the legislature's next session.[14] 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.[15]

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.[15] 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.[2]

In 1887, President Grover Cleveland appointed Leslie to be the Territorial Governor of Montana.[16] 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.[17] 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.[16]

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.[18]

• Harrison, Lowell H. (1992). Kleber, John E. (ed.). The Kentucky Encyclopedia. Associate editors: Thomas D. Clark, Lowell H. Harrison, and James C. Klotter. Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0-8131-1772-0.
• "Kentucky Governor Preston Hopkins Leslie". National Governors Association. Retrieved April 4, 2012.
• McQueen, Keven (2001). Offbeat Kentuckians: Legends to Lunatics. Ill. by Kyle McQueen. Kuttawa, Kentucky: McClanahan Publishing House. ISBN 0-913383-80-5.
• Powell, Robert A. (1976). Kentucky Governors. Danville, Kentucky: Bluegrass Printing Company. OCLC 2690774.
• Tapp, Hambleton; James C. Klotter (1977). Kentucky: Decades of Discord, 1865–1900. The University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0-916968-05-7. Retrieved May 30, 2009.
• Wade, John W. (1910). "Hon. Preston H. Leslie, A Short Sketch of His Life". Contributions to the Historical Society of Montana. Rocky Mountain Publishing Company. 7. Retrieved May 29, 2009.
• Webb, Ross A. (2004). Lowell Hayes Harrison (ed.). Kentucky's Governors. Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0-8131-2326-7. Retrieved May 30, 2009.
• Wright, George C. (1990). Racial Violence in Kentucky, 1865–1940 : Lynchings, Mob Rule, and "Legal Lynchings". Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 978-0-8071-2073-6.