Quite a buzz is in the news in respect of today’s 50th anniversary of President Ford pardoning President Nixon. The talk under way is over whether President Biden — or, if she wins, Kamala Harris — should pardon Mr. Biden’s son and, in President Trump, his predecessor. Or, should President Trump win a second term, whether he should pardon Messrs. Biden. The Sun, we’ve marked, is in favor of pardoning the whole lot of them — and more to boot.

We see such pardons as a bid to leach from our politics the bitterness and ad hominem anger that has obtained these past several terms. To those who say that the kind of grafting and tax evasion of which the Bidens have been accused is too venal, or that the January 6 protests were an insurrection and were too serious, we say study the history. None of it holds a candle to what drew presidential pardons in our early history.

Take your Shays rebellion. That was a tax revolt in Western Massachusetts. The Shays rebels, armed, went after an armory at Springfield and other institutions of government. The rebellion saw nine dead, three on the government’s side, six on the rebels’. The Constitution hadn’t been written, never mind ratified, at that point. So the pardoning, including Daniel Shays for treason, had to be done by the governor of Massachusetts, John Hancock. 

The first federal pardons were issued by George Washington in favor of the Whiskey rebels in Pennsylvania. Theirs, too, was a tax revolt, this by backwoods distillers opposing the use against them of the power of excise granted Congress in Article I. Something like 13,000 government troops — including the commander in chief, Washington — appeared against the 900 rebels. Two went to the gallows before President Washington exercised the pardon power.

It was a similar story in respect of the Fries rebels in Philadelphia. That was yet another armed tax revolt, this time by farmers. It was not as violent as the Shays and Whiskey rebellions, but 30 persons were put on trial. Fries, himself, and two others were sent up for treason, but they were pardoned by President John Adams (he saw them as Germans unable to read our laws). He went on, on May 21, 1800, to issue a general amnesty to all those involved.

We’ve sketched this history before. Not, we’ve noted, to “make excuses for anyone, neither those who breached the American capitol on January 6 and interrupted the counting of the presidential vote nor the rebellions that took place in the early years of our republic.” It is our purpose to compare January 6 and the real rebellions. The rioters were not armed and did not kill anyone, nor have any been charged with treason or other capital crimes.

Then there is Hunter Biden. His decision to enter an Alford Plea in his trial on tax charges — conceding there is evidence to convict him without admitting guilt — is sparking suggestions that he expects a pardon from “the big guy.” Legal sage Jonathan Turley frames this prospect in familial terms. Mr. Biden would “end his political career with an act as a father, which some would condemn but most would understand.”

By our lights the pardon power beckons President Biden and whoever follows him. Nor is there any constitutional impediment to their use of it. They would have the Constitution, precedent, and history on their side. President Clinton pardoned his own personal half-brother Roger. President Andrew Johnson pardoned the Civil War rebels, President Carter the Vietnam draft-dodgers. George Washington himself laid out the logic.

Washington was the most unifying figure in our long history (he won two terms with a unanimous electoral vote). He urged using the pardon with “every degree of moderation and tenderness” that “national justice, dignity, and safety may permit.” We’d add but that the road to a happier politics is open — think of it as United States Route 202. It runs through Western Massachusetts and is formally known, to honor its namesake, as the Daniel Shays Highway.