By Daniel Lee
Alexandria, VA – The Alexandria Forum returns for the first time since 2023 to the Alexandria History Museum at The Lyceum on September 18. In keeping with the theme of America’s 250th birthday, this forum focuses on Alexandria’s role in the American Revolution. Arguing that the Revolution was more than a war, in fact that it was a Revolution of Ideas, the forum explores Alexandria and Northern Virginia’s unique role in the birth of the new nation. The Alexandria Forum, in partnership with Emerging Revolutionary War, showcases the history of this region during the Revolutionary War, and argues that those ideas are still with us today.
The forum includes a presentation by Kerry Mitchell, Historic Site Specialist at Carlyle House Museum and Historic Park, on the signers of the Fairfax Resolves, one of the strongest local resolves to the “Intolerable Acts,” which served as a template for the Declaration of Independence, written two years later. Given Alexandria’s seat in Fairfax County at the time, the Fairfax Resolves were written and adopted in our city.
Not all Alexandria residents supported the Revolution. Public historian Ken Bancroft will present research based on the Revolutionary War Journal of Nicholas Cresswell, a British loyalist, who both sought to spoil the revolution in Alexandria, and to escape it. Cresswell eventually got his wish to return to British soil but left one of the most complete portraits of life in Alexandria during the Revolution.
Greg Beaman, the author of the recent City documentary study of City Hall and Market Square, fleshes out his research of life for enslaved people who lived near Alexandria’s center during the same time as Cresswell’s journal.
Military historian John Maass concludes the forum with his presentation on the Marquis de Lafayette’s 1781 Virginia Campaign, arguing that American Independence was a result of a determined operation led by the still-young Lafayette to defend the Commonwealth against the experienced troops of Lord Cornwallis. The campaign culminated in Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown.
The Alexandria History Museum at The Lyceum is a fitting setting for this exchange of ideas. For two decades before the Civil War, The Lyceum was the intellectual and cultural center of Alexandria. The war interrupted its educational activities. Like most of the other large structures in town, the building was seized in the spring of 1861 for use as a hospital by the Union Army. In 1868, John B. Daingerfield bought The Lyceum and remodeled it into a fashionable residence for his daughter, Mary Helen.
After the death of its last residential owner, Dr. Hugh McGuire, in 1938, the building was sold again and became an office building. By the late 1960s, the once elegant Lyceum had deteriorated to the point that plans were underway to demolish it. A major effort was mounted by Jean Keith and other local preservationists to save the structure, capped by a dramatic 4-3 vote in favor of purchase by Alexandria’s City Council in 1969. Renovated and refurnished, The Lyceum reopened as Virginia’s first Bicentennial Center in 1974 and became the City’s history museum in 1985.
Forum attendees are invited to a Tavern’s Games Night at Gadsby’s Tavern Museum. The event includes historic tavern games, a brief presentation, and trivia. Cost is $10, and Forum attendees receive one free drink.
For more information and to purchase tickets for the 2026 Alexandria Forum, please visit https://www.alexandriava.gov/historic-alexandria/the-alexandria-forum.
