Documents from the US National Archives reveal that Abraham Lincoln pardoned Joe Biden’s great-great-grandfather Moses J. Robinette in 1864 after he was convicted in a military court for his role in a late-night brawl during the Civil War.
Robinette, a Union Army veterinary surgeon, had been sentenced to two years hard labor for attacking a fellow employee with a pocketknife during a fight, but three army officers petitioned Lincoln arguing the sentence was too harsh as Robinette claimed he acted in self-defense against a much larger man.
Lincoln agreed and signed the pardon.
Historian David J. Gerleman wrote, the “slender sheaf of 22 well-preserved pages of his trial transcript, unobtrusively squeezed among many hundreds of other routine court-martial cases in the National Archives, reveals the hidden link between the two men — and between two presidents across the centuries.”
President Biden’s great-great-grandfather got into a brawl at a Union Army camp during the Civil War.
Abraham Lincoln pardoned him, newly discovered documents reveal. https://t.co/1eii9nb5oY
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) February 19, 2024
He continued, “Those few pages not only fill in an unknown piece of Biden family history, but also serve as a reminder of just how many Civil War stories have yet to be told.”
The discovery links the two presidents across centuries and sheds new light on an unknown piece of Biden family history that had been waiting to be uncovered among the archives for over 160 years.
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