(Republican Senate News) – Arjun Singh, a contributor for the Daily Caller, recently put out a report that revealed some incredibly interesting American history, a fine little tidbit many of us likely had no clue about. It involves President Abraham Lincoln and President Joe Biden’s great-great grandfather. Now that I have your attention, let’s get our history lesson in for the day, shall we?
Moses Johnson Robinette, Biden’s ancestor, was pardoned by Lincoln back in 1864. His crime? Robinette stabbed a fellow Union Army employee named John J. Alexander. Alexander was serving as a brigade wagon master at the time of the incident. He is alleged to have made a rather uncouth comment about a female cook who was working in the mess shanty, which upset Robinette.
“The stabbing occurred on March 21, 1864, at a Union Army camp in Beverley Ford, Virginia, along the banks of the Rappahannock River, the Post reported. Robinette was serving as a veterinary surgeon in the U.S. Army Quartermaster’s Department, responsible for the care of military horses and mules that pulled artillery wagons, despite not having formal training as a physician or veterinarian,” Singh penned.
“[W]hatever 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,” Robinette went on to say during his military court-martial. He was originally charged with attempted murder and for violations of good order and military discipline.
When Joe Biden was born, he was closer in time to the Lincoln assassination than he was to his second campaign for President. pic.twitter.com/VP2AGDJS5r
— Joshua Reed Eakle (@JoshEakle) February 18, 2024
The court-martial then unanimously convicted Biden’s great-great granddad on all charges he faced, minus the one for attempted murder. He was sentenced to two years of hard labor on Dry Tortugas Island, located near Key West, Florida, which was once described as “America’s Siberia.” In other words, it was a hellish place to be.
“Shortly after his arrival, three Union Army officers wrote to request clemency from Lincoln for Robinette, the Post reported. They claimed that he was ‘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,’ while noting his loyalty to the Union cause,” Singh stated in his report.
Robinette was noted to be “ardent, and Influential … in opposing Traitors and their schemes to destroy the Government,” the three officers said in his favor. “Think of his motherless Daughters and sons at home! … [Praying for] your interposition in behalf of the unfortunate Father … and distressed family of loved Children, Union Daughters & Union Sons.”
The officers weren’t the only ones backing Robinette. A Republican senator from West Virginia, Waitman T. Willey, also recommended the man be pardoned by Lincoln.
“‘[Pardon for unexecuted part of punishment. A. Lincoln. Sep. 1. 1864,’ Lincoln wrote following the receipt of a report from U.S. Army Judge Advocate General John Holt about the case. The Department of War later issued Special Order 296, which freed Robinette from prison after just over one month of incarceration,” the article disclosed.
He had once run a hotel located in Grafton, Virginia, but unfortunately, it was destroyed during the Civil War. After that took place, Robinette moved back to Allegany County, Maryland, where his family had fled from Virginia during the war. He died in 1903.
Robinette went on to have a granddaughter named Mary Elizabeth Robinette, who would later go on to be the mother of Joseph Robinette Biden, Sr., the father of our current president.
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