John M. (John Morgan) Landrum

Born in Edgefield District, South Carolina, in 1815, he graduated from South Carolina College in 1842, taught school for a time, then studied law and began practicing in Shreveport, Louisiana. He later served as mayor of Shreveport before being elected as a Democrat to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served in the 36th Congress.

For readers encountering his name in an audiobook library, he is most closely associated with The Slavery Question, a speech delivered in the House of Representatives on April 27, 1860, and later printed. That work places him among the public voices of the years just before the Civil War, and it is best read as a historical document from that era rather than as a literary career in the usual sense.

He died in 1861, the same year the national crisis he had spoken within became full civil war. While not widely known today as an author in the modern sense, his printed speech remains of interest to listeners and historians seeking firsthand political writing from the period.