Kweisi Mfume: “I appreciate the gentleman's kind and overly gracious remarks. I appreciate also his sense of history and for what I…”

“I appreciate the gentleman's kind and overly gracious remarks. I appreciate also his sense of history and for what I think today is being displayed as a bipartisan effort to draw attention to and to reconcile a very real problem. So I will be more than happy to do that. And Lincoln was one of my heroes in many respects, not just because he signed, as Mr. Butterfield said, an executive order in 1863, but that he reminded us of what we were supposed to be as a Nation. Was he flawed? Yes. Are we flawed? Yes. Do we increase our ability to grow together? The absolute answer is yes. So I do appreciate the gentleman's comments, and I appreciate him yielding.”