William Preston Johnston (January 5, 1831 – July 16, 1899) was a lawyer, scholar, poet, and Confederate soldier. He was the son and biographer of Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston.[1] He was a president of Louisiana State University and the first president of Tulane University from 1884 in the same year that the school was renamed from the University of Louisiana.[2]
Johnston wrote two books of poetry, My Garden Walk (1894) and Pictures of the Patriarchs and Other Poems (1895). He also wrote The Prototype of Hamlet and Other Shakespearean Problems (1890) as well as a biography of his father, The Life of General Albert Sidney Johnston (1878), a "most valuable and exhaustive biography".[1]
Colonel William Preston Johnston, The Life of General Albert Sidney Johnston: His Service in the Armies of the United States, the Republic of Texas, and the Confederate States.
Reviewed work(s): William Preston Johnston: A Transitional Figure of the Confederacy. by Arthur Marvin Shaw
"Col. Wm. Preston Johnston, The Gallant Son of the Great Southern Chieftan [sic]," New Orleans, La. Daily Picayune (July 17, 1899).