Joseph Robinette Biden’s great great grandfather was also a law breaker. Moses Johnson Robinette, was convicted of stabbing a fellow Union Army employee. Robinette allegedly stabbed John J. Alexander, a civilian brigade wagon master. The great great grandfather was as creepy as his great great grandson and the fight broke out after Robinette made an inappropriate remark about a woman who worked in the mess hall. We do not know whether he sniffed her hair or not.
The stabbing occurred on March 21, 1864, at a Union Army camp in Beverley Ford, Virginia. Robinette was serving as a veterinarian at the time of the stabbing. He faced several charges including attempted murder. He took care of the horses and mules that were used to haul artillery from battle site to battle site. He was convicted on all charges except attempted murder and was sentenced to two years in prison at hard labor.
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
Robinette said during his military court-martial:
VISIT OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL“[W]hatever I have done was done in self defence, 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 court-martial unanimously convicted Robinette on all charges except attempted murder, the Post reported. Three months later, he began his sentence of two years of hard labor on Dry Tortugas Island near Key West, Florida, a place described at the time as “America’s Siberia.”
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.
Robinette was “ardent, and Influential … in opposing Traitors and their schemes to destroy the Government,” the three officers claimed. “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.”
Robinette’s cause was also endorsed by Republican Sen. Waitman T. Wiley of West Virginia, who recommended to Lincoln that he be pardoned.
The Department of War later issued Special Order 296, which freed Robinette from prison after just over one month of incarceration.
Robinette had previously run a hotel in Grafton, Virginia, by a station of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, with the hotel being destroyed during the Civil War, the Post reported. He returned to Allegany County, Maryland, where his family had fled from Virginia, after being released from prison and died in 1903.
Lincoln wrote following the receipt of a report from U.S. Army Judge Advocate General John Holt about the case:
“Pardon for unexecuted part of punishment. A. Lincoln. Sep. 1. 1864.”
