Abraham Lincoln pardoned Biden’s great-great-grandfather

[David Lockmiller]

The Washington Post
By David J. Gerleman
February 19, 2024

On the evening of March 21, 1864, the quiet of a small corner of the Army of the Potomac’s sprawling winter camp along the Rappahannock River near Beverly Ford, Va., was disturbed when a fight broke out in one of the mess tents between Union Army civilian employees Moses J. Robinette and John J. Alexander. The scuffle left Alexander bleeding from knife wounds, and Robinette was charged with attempted murder.

On that March evening, the brigade wagon master, overheard Robinette saying something about him to the female cook and rushed into the mess shanty to demand an explanation. Tempers flared, expletives followed, and Robinette drew his pocketknife. A brief scuffle left Alexander bleeding from several cuts before camp watchmen arrived to arrest Robinette.

Nearly a month passed before Robinette’s military trial began. The charges specified that he 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 in closing “that 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. The next day, they rendered a unanimous verdict: guilty on all counts with the exception of “attempt to kill.” The punishment was two years’ incarceration at hard labor. The commander of the Army of the Potomac, Gen. George G. Meade, did not confirm Robinette’s sentence until early July, when he was sent to the Dry Tortugas islands near Key West, Fla.

There, three Army officers who knew him petitioned Lincoln to overturn his conviction. They wrote 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.”

They testified that Robinette had, from the outbreak of the war, been “ardent, and influential … in opposing Traitors and their schemes to destroy the Government.”

Lincoln’s private secretary, John G. Nicolay, promptly 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. Sep. 1. 1864.” Shortly thereafter, the War Department issued Special Orders No. 296, freeing Robinette from prison.

Robinette was Biden’s great-great-grandfather.

David J. Gerleman is a 19th-century historian, Lincoln scholar and history instructor at George Mason University.