On the recordOctober 26, 2011
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my friend, the gentleman from Illinois. He knows something about struggling for civil rights, and he's done a great deal for civil rights, and I respect that very much. As a Christian, it's okay to talk about our religious beliefs as long as we don't ram it down somebody else's throat trying to force them to believe as we do, but the First Amendment allows our right to discuss that. I'm very grateful for Abraham Lincoln, and as I was just talking with some constituents down in Statuary Hall about John Quincy Adams believing he was called to try to end slavery in the United States after he was defeated in 1828 for a second term, so he did the unthinkable after being President: he ran for the House of Representatives. And some thought it was extremely strange, and as I told my constituents, my friends, it was reputed that when someone asked him about that, he said he was prouder of being elected to the House of Representatives after being President than he was after being elected President, which seems strange to some of us until you realize that it means after he was President his neighbors still liked him. That's a big deal because most Presidents don't end up going back to their earliest hometown; they go somewhere else. John Quincy Adams got elected nine times, preached sermons over and over down the hall about the evils of slavery.…





