John Anthony Quitman (September 1, 1798 – July 17, 1858) was an American lawyer, politician, and soldier. As president of the Mississippi Senate, he was the acting governor of Mississippi for one month (from December 3, 1835 to January 7, 1836) as a Whig. He was elected governor in 1849 as a Democrat, and served from January 10, 1850, until his resignation on February 3, 1851, shortly after his arrest for violating U.S. neutrality laws. He was strongly pro-slavery and a leading Fire-Eater.

According to Quitman's first biographer, John F. H. Claiborne, writing in 1860, "A more ambitious man never lived. ...He was greedy for military fame." "For Quitman, military glory and political ambition had priority over management of his three plantations and numerous slaves."

Born at Rhinebeck, New York, in 1798, Quitman studied classics at Hartwick Seminary, graduating in 1816. He was an instructor at Mount Airy College, Pennsylvania, but decided to study law. Quitman's family was of Dutch descent.

He was admitted to the bar in 1820 and moved to Chillicothe, Ohio. He moved south to Natchez, Mississippi, the following year. He purchased Monmouth in 1826, and it would remain in his family for the next 100 years. It was an archaeological dig site investigated by Dr. Montroville Dickeson during his 10-year study of the Natchez Indians of the Mississippi River Valley.

Quitman owned four plantations: Springfield, which he purchased in 1834, on the Mississippi River near Natchez, a cotton plantation and dairy farm; Palmyra (Warren County, Mississippi), which he acquired through marriage (cotton); Live Oaks (Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, sugar and molasses); and Belen (Holmes County, Mississippi, cotton).

He did not personally manage the plantations, a task entrusted to (white) overseers. Not counting house servants, at Palmyra, he enslaved 311 people under sixty years of age in 1848; at Live Oaks, 85 in 1850; at Springfield, 39 in 1842; and at Belen, 32 in 1858.

One favored enslaved person accompanied him on his expedition to Mexico. Being frequently absent, Quitman was unaware of slave resistance and did not plan for slave revolts. "Neither he nor his family entertained second thoughts about the propriety or morality of their holding blacks in bondage." He "genuinely believed that owner-slave relations were harmonious. ...The Quitmans lived to the very eve of the Civil War virtually oblivious of the dangers of slave rebellion and believing, as Quitman put it, that Southern society was 'based upon a more solid foundation' than Northern society."

In 1823 Quitman was the brigade inspector for the local militia and in the next year organized a volunteer militia company called the Natchez Fencibles. Quitman practiced law in Natchez until 1826 when he was elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives. He became Chancellor of the state in 1828 and served on the state's Constitutional Convention in 1832. He was the protégé of John C. Calhoun during the Nullification Crisis.