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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2009
Robert Munford, the eighteenth-century Virginia squire and litterateur, has long served as both a symbol and subject of analysis for students of colonial American history and culture. In the nearly-barren ground of eighteenth-century American drama, Munford's plays, The Candidates and The Patriots, while never actually produced on stage during his lifetime, stand out as two of the most important attempts by a colonial American to use traditional dramatic techniques to illustrate distinctively American characters and themes. And for historians, these same two plays, which grew out of Munford's own experience in Virginia politics, have served as rich and evocative sources from which to reconstruct the operation and ethos of the political culture of revolutionary Virginia.
1 The best account of the literary significance of Munford's work is Baine, Rodney M., Robert Munford, America's First Comic Dramatist (Athens, Ga., 1967)Google Scholar.
2 Hubbell, Jay and Adair, Douglass, eds., “ Robert Munford's ‘The Candidates,’” William and Mary Quarterly, Third Ser., 5 (1948), 217–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The Candidates was first printed in 1798 by Munford's son William and was not reprinted until Adair and Hubbell undertook the task. All citations to The Candidates in this paper refer to Adair and Hubbell's edition.
3 Ibid., pp. 222–25.
4 Sydnor, Charles, Gentlemen Freeholders (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1952), especially pp. 44–59, 86–118Google Scholar. In Sydnor's words: “ The Candidates must be regarded as a remarkably reliable and interesting record. … If some allowance be made for the satirical character of the comedy and for Munford's earnest championship of righteousness, The Candidates can be accepted as an accurate reflection of the way eighteenth-century Virginians behaved at elections ” (p. 133).
5 Ibid., pp. 107–18.
6 Ibid.Morgan, Edmund S., in his pathbreaking study, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York: Norton, 1975), pp. 363–65Google Scholar, adopts much the same perspective on The Candidates as Sydnor, concluding that “ the larger lesson of the play is that cajoling, fawning, and wheedling did not win ” elections. Rather, the ultimate victory of those candidates possessing superior qualifications is, in Morgan's view, testimony “ to the author's belief that Virginia's freeholders could be counted on to support worthy men in the end.”
7 For the purposes of this paper the region of Virginia's Central Southside is defined as that encompassing Greenville, Dinwiddie, Brunswick, Mecklenburg, Prince George, Amelia, Nottoway, Bedford, Lunenburg, Prince Edward, Charlotte, Halifax, and Pittsylvania counties. Those counties are all situated south and west of Richmond, and are bounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains in the west and the colony of North Carolina to the south.
8 Baine, , Robert Munford, pp. 3–5Google Scholar.
9 Ibid., pp. 5–8. Baine's reconstruction of Munford's early life is competent and informative, and much of my brief summary of Munford's family background and youth is based on his lengthier treatment. Baine does, however, like Sydnor, tend to assume too great a homogeneity between the settled, orderly society which Munford came to know when he was living with William Beverley and the newer, more disorderly, society of the Virginia Southside.
10 Ibid., pp. 10–12.
11 Ibid., pp. 17–18; Bell, Landon C., ed., Sunlight on the Southside (Philadelphia, 1931), p. 155Google Scholar; Real and Personal Property Tax Lists, Mecklenburg County, 1782, Virginia State Library, hereafter referred to as V.S.L.
12 Bell, Landon C., The Old Free State: A Contribution to the History of Lunenburg County, 2 vols. (Richmond, 1940), 1, 326–34Google Scholar; McIlwaine, H. R., ed., “ Justices of the Peace of Colonial Virginia,” in Virginia State Library Bulletin, 14 (1921), 65Google Scholar; Mecklenburg County Order Books, Vols. 1–5, VSL; Kennedy, John P. and McIlwaine, H. R., Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia, 13 vols. (Richmond, 1905–1915), 1762–65, 1766–09, 1770–72, 1773–76Google Scholar, hereafter referred to as JHB; Swem, Earl G., A Register of the General Assembly of Virginia, 1776–1918 (Richmond, 1918)Google Scholar.
13 Byrd, William, “ Journey to the Land of Eden,” in Wright, Louis B., ed., The Prose Works of William Byrd of Westover (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), p. 385CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a more extended analysis of the emergence of the Lunenburg County social order see Beeman, Richard R., “ Social Change and Cultural Conflict in Virginia: Lunenburg County, 1746–1774,” William and Mary Quarterly, forthcoming, 07, 1978CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
14 Baine, , Munford, pp. 18–19Google Scholar.
15 The Candidates, rather than Munford's other work, The Patriots, will provide the principal focus for analysis in this paper. The Patriots, written sometime after 1777, is a more serious look at the ambiguities surrounding questions of loyalty during the American Revolution and is less easily linked to the specific context of Munford's own locality.
16 JHB, Mar. 1758, pp. 83–84.
17 Ibid.; William and Mary Quarterly, Second Ser., 2, 243–53; James Mitchell to Clement Read, 23 Mar. 1761, Read Family Papers, Virginia Historical Society; Bell, , The Old Free State, 1, 326–34Google Scholar; Bell, Landon C., Cumberland Parish, Lunenburg County Virginia Vestry Book, 1746–1816 (Richmond, 1930), p. 26Google Scholar.
18 As Baine, , Munford, p. 60Google Scholar has noted, the character “ Guzzle ” appears to have been modeled directly after Lunenburg justice Cornelius Carghill, a man whose drinking habits were well-known in the county.
19 Munford, , The Candidates, p. 232Google Scholar.
20 Hening, William Waller, The Statutes at Large: Being a Collection of all the Laws of Virginia, 13 vols. (Richmond, 1819–1823), 3, 243Google Scholar.
21 An analysis of the Journal of the House of Burgesses during the period 1740–70 indicates that elections in the Southside were contested with more than twice the frequency than elections in the Tidewater or Northern Neck regions. Similarly, when one looks at the annual turnover of membership in the House of Burgesses during the same period, it is also apparent that the group of men representing the eastern sections in the Assembly was far more stable than that from the Southside.
22 JHB, 8 Mar. 1758, pp. 83–84.
23 Ibid.
24 Bell, , Old Free State, 2, 68Google Scholar; Lunenburg County Deed Books, 11. pp. 114 ff., VSL.
25 Munford, , The Candidates, p. 237Google Scholar.
26 Ibid., pp. 243–44.
27 Ibid., p. 238.
28 JHB, ii Feb. 1772, pp. 251–54, 288–89. Meherrin Baptist Church Minute Books, Feb., Aug. 1774, Virginia Baptist Historical Society, Richmond, Virginia.
29 JHB, 26 Mar. 1756, p. 339, 7 May 1757, pp. 456–58, 1768–69, p. 181; 1770–72, pp. 3, 113, 182, 212, 271; 1773–75, pp. 3, 67, 164.
30 For other examples of the tumult accompanying elections in the Virginia Southside see JHB 1 Apr. 1747, p. 238; 19 Apr. 1757, p. 420; 8 Mar. 1758, pp. 83–84; 5 Nov. 1762, pp. 73–75. 92–93; 8 Nov. 1769. p. 231.
31 Ibid., 8 Mar. 1758, pp. 83–84.
32 Ibid., 8 Nov. 1769, p. 231.
33 Ibid., 1766–69, pp. 206, 209, 212, 221, 231, 245; 1758–61, p. vii; 1761–65, pp. 3. 63, 169, 201, 313; 1770–72, pp. 3, 113, 143; 1773–75, pp. 3, 67, 163.
34 For accounts of the changes brought about in the western regions of Virginia during the 1760s and 1770s see Isaac, Rhys, “ Evangelical Revolt: The Nature of the Baptists' Challenge to the Traditional Order in Virginia, 1765–1775,” William and Mary Quarterly, Third Ser., 21 (1974), 345–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Richard R. Beeman and Rhys Isaac, “ Cultural Conflict and Social Change in the Revolutionary South: A Case Study of Lunenburg County, Virginia,” forthcoming.