Joe Biden’s great-great-grandfather was charged with attempted murder after a civil war-era brawl – but pardoned of any wrongdoing by Abraham Lincoln, a newspaper said on Monday, reviving on the US holiday of Presidents’ Day the often contentious issue of presidential powers to grant pardons.
Citing documents from the US national archives, the historian David J Gerleman wrote in the Washington Post that Biden’s paternal forebear Moses J Robinette was pardoned by Lincoln after Robinette got into a fight with a fellow Union army civilian employee, John J Alexander, in Virginia. Robinette drew a knife and sliced Alexander.
The newspaper reported that Robinette worked as an army veterinary surgeon during the US’s war between the states. He was charged with attempted murder and sentenced to two years’ hard labor after failing to convince a court he had acted in self-defense.
Three army officers appealed the conviction to Lincoln, arguing the sentence was too harsh. Biden’s long-ago White House predecessor agreed, and Robinette was pardoned on 1 September 1864, seven months before Lincoln was assassinated.
Gerleman wrote that the 22 pages of court martial transcript he found in the national archives helped to “fill in an unknown piece of Biden family history” – on a Presidents’ Day that fell a week after Lincoln’s 12 February birthday, to boot.
The historian said that Robinette’s trial transcript had been “unobtrusively squeezed among many hundreds of other routine court-martial cases” and revealed “the hidden link between the two men – and between two presidents across the centuries”.
Article II, section 2 of the US constitution authorizes American presidents “to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment”.
The power is rooted in the monarch’s prerogative to grant mercy under early English law, which later traveled across the Atlantic Ocean to the American colonies. US presidents typically use the power to pardon at the end of their terms.
Recent presidents have used the powers to differing degrees. George W Bush issued 200 acts of clemency; Barack Obama, 1,927: Donald Trump, 237; and Biden so far 14, excluding thousands pardoned for simple possession of marijuana.
Biden’s marijuana pardons only apply to those who were convicted of use and simple possession of marijuana on federal lands and in the District of Columbia.
Jimmy Carter issued 566 acts of clemency, excluding more than 200,000 for Vietnam war draft evasion.
Lincoln’s pardon to Robinette was of 343 acts of clemency he issued.
According to the Post, the fight between Robinette and Alexander took place on the evening of 21 March 1864, at the army of the Potomac’s winter camp near Beverly Ford, Virginia.
Alexander, a brigade wagon master, had overheard Robinette saying something about him to the female cook. An argument ensued, and Alexander was left bleeding. Robinette’s charges included attempted murder. Though he was not found guilty on that charge, he was convicted on the others and imprisoned on the Dry Tortugas island off the coast of Florida.
Three army officers who knew Robinette later petitioned Lincoln to overturn his conviction, writing that the 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”.
The request went through a West Virginia senator, who described Robinette’s punishment as “a hard sentence on the case as stated”. Then it went to Lincoln’s private secretary, who requested a judicial report and the trial transcripts.
When the letter eventually reached Lincoln, he issued a pardon “for unexecuted part of punishment”. The then president signed it: “A. Lincoln. Sep. 1. 1864.”
Robinette was released from prison and returned to his family in Maryland to resume farming.
A brief obituary following Robinette’s death in 1903 eulogized him as a “man of education and gentlemanly attainments”.
The obituary made no mention of Robinette’s wartime court martial or his connection to Lincoln, the Post said.
Robinette died about 12 years before Biden’s late father – his great-grandson – was born.
• This article was amended on 20 February 2024 to clarify that Moses J Robinette was charged with attempted murder, but not convicted of it.
