Preston Leslie (8 March 1819-7 February 1907) was the Democratic Governor of Kentucky from 13 February 1871 to 31 August 1875 (succeeding John W. Stevenson and preceding James B. McCreary) and of the Montana Territory from 18 February 1887 to 13 April 1889 (succeeding Samuel Thomas Hauser and preceding Benjamin F. White).
Biography[]
Preston Leslie was born in Wayne County, Kentucky in 1819, and he became a lawyer in 1840 and relocated to Tompkinsville in 1841. He was elected to the State House in 1844 as a Whig, having previously served as county attorney, and he served in the State House until 1850, in the State Senate from 1850 to 1855 and from 1867 to 1871 (having wavered in his support for both unionism and secession during the American Civil War), as Governor of Kentucky from 1871 to 1875, as the territorial governor of Montana from 1887 to 1889, and as a district attorney in Montana from 1894 to 1898. Leslie was a Bourbon Democrat backed by tobacco and railroad interests, and he supported temperance while a territorial governor. He died in Helena in 1907.