Documents discovered at the National Archives in Washington show that former President Abraham Lincoln pardoned the great-great-grandfather of President Joe Biden, a Union Army civilian employee named Moses Robinette, The Washington Post reported Monday.
Joseph Robinette Biden's ancestral line has long been known and includes Moses Robinette among his paternal ancestors from western Maryland, but little has been chronicled about the man until his court-martial records were discovered.
The story dates to March 21, 1864 during the Civil War, when a fight broke out in one of the mess tents near Beverly Ford, Virginia, between Robinette and Union Army civilian employee John Alexander.
The fight left Alexander bleeding from knife wounds; Robinette was charged with attempted murder and was incarcerated on the remote Dry Tortugas islands near Key West, Florida.
The charges specified that Robinette had become intoxicated and incited "a dangerous quarrel," violating good order and military discipline. Because a drawn weapon was involved, assault with "attempt to kill" was included among the charges.
According to the trial transcript, Robinette stated: "Whatever I have done was done in self defense, that I had no malice towards Mr. Alexander before or since. He grabbed me and possibly might have injured me seriously had I not resorted to the means that I did."
The military judges were not convinced and rendered a unanimous verdict: guilty on all counts with the exception of "attempt to kill." The punishment was two years of incarceration at hard labor, according to The Washington Post.
Around the time Robinette arrived on Dry Tortugas, three army officers who knew him petitioned Lincoln to overturn his conviction, writing that Robinette's sentence was unduly harsh for "defending himself and cutting with a penknife a teamster much his superior in strength and size, all under the impulse of the excitement of the moment."
A newly elected senator from the recently admitted state of West Virginia endorsed the plea, calling Robinette's punishment "a hard sentence on the case as stated." Lincoln's private secretary, John Nicolay, requested that the judge advocate general, Joseph Holt, send over a report and the trial transcripts for presidential review.
Holt's report arrived in late August, and Lincoln made his decision, writing, "Pardon for unexecuted part of punishment. A. Lincoln. September 1. 1864." Shortly thereafter, the War Department issued Special Orders No. 296, freeing Robinette from prison.
After more than a month on Dry Tortugas, Robinette returned to his family in Maryland, where he took up farming again. He died at his daughter's home in 1903.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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