While Joe Biden has the power to grant pardons to those convicted of federal crimes, he once granted a pardon to one of his relatives himself – none other than then-President Abraham Lincoln.
Historian David J. Gerleman writes in The Washington Post that documents collected by the US National Archives show that Biden’s great-great-grandfather, Moses J. Robinette, was pardoned by Lincoln after he was charged with attempted murder following a fight in 1864.
The charges against Robinette came after he got into a fight with a fellow civilian employee of the Union Army in Virginia, ending up brandishing a pocketknife and cutting the man.
Post reports that Robinette, then working as an army vet, claimed he was acting in self-defense, but was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to two years of hard labor.
Eventually, three military officers appealed the sentence to President Lincoln, claiming it was too harsh.
Joe Biden commuted the sentence of 11 non-violent drug offenders, pardoned marijuana offenses
Lincoln, who was president from 1861 until his assassination in 1865, agreed—issuing Robinette’s pardon on September 1, 1864.
Gerleman writes that the 22 pages of court-martial transcripts found in the Archives help “fill in an unknown part of the history of the Biden family.”
“[The] 22 well-preserved pages of [Robinette’s] The trial transcript, tucked unobtrusively among the many hundreds of other routine military court cases in the National Archives, reveals a hidden connection between the two men—and between the two presidents over the centuries,” Gerleman writes in Fast.
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According to the White House Historical Association, George Washington issued the first presidential pardon — which frees someone from punishment and restores all civil liberties — in 1795.
In December, Biden issued a proclamation pardoning those convicted of certain marijuana offenses, building on last year’s historic pardon for federal felons for simple possession of marijuana. The pardons mean that thousands of those convicted of the use and simple possession of marijuana in federal lands and in the District of Columbia will now be eligible for pardons.
Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education