To find a tenuous connection between Joe Biden and his distant predecessor in the White House, Republican Abraham Lincoln, one has to go back 160 years to when the 16th president of the United States pardoned Moses Robinett. Current Democratic President.

According to the Washington Post on Monday, documents housed in the U.S. National Archives show that Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) pardoned the trial of his ancestor who was convicted of fighting a soldier during the Civil War.

On March 21, 1864, at an army camp on the banks of the Potomac in the US state of Virginia, on the edge of the federal capital of Washington, John Alexander, an army employee, heard Moses Robinette talking about him to the cook. Mr. Alexander then rushes into the room, cursing at the fly, angry and Robinette takes a penknife from his pocket. The two men fight, and Alexander is cut with a knife and bleeding.

Sentenced to two years imprisonment

A month later, a military trial began against Robinette, who was charged, among other things “attempted murder”. On the stand, witnesses describe a man “Soulful, always lively and witty”And versions differ as to whether either of them had been drinking before the fight broke out.

During the trial, Robinette promised no “No malice towards Alexander, before and after (the fight). He caught me and could have hurt me badly if I hadn't resorted to the way I did. But the judges sentenced the president's great-grandfather to two years in prison. He is then sent to the Dry Tortugas Islands off the coast of Florida, where he finds three military officers he knows well. They later asked Lincoln to revoke his sentence, criticizing the harsh punishment “Defending himself and wounding with a pen-knife a colleague superior to him in strength and size, all under the impulse of the excitement of the moment”.

The request goes back to the president, who decides to pardon Joe Biden's ancestor. Freed, Moses Robinett returns to Maryland and begins his career as a farmer. He was born in 1819 and died in 1903, as his obituary depicts him. “a great elegant educated man”39 years before the current President was born.