Morrisville doesn't look like a historic site. Once a quiet village, it is now one of the Triangle's hottest
hotbeds of development.
But before the last traces of old Morrisville disappear beneath the condos and cul-de-sacs, it would be
nice if the town could save what little history is left. Morrisville, says amateur historian Ernest Dollar, has a
story to tell:
It was within sight and sound of the N.C. 54/Carpenter Road intersection that some of the last fighting
of the Civil War took place. Death and destruction finally came to Morrisville in the last days of that
national tragedy.
Such is the nature of armed conflict. Some are destined to be the first to fall, while others die after the
reasons for fighting have have all but vanished. Such, says Dollar, was the fate of Morrisville.
On the morning of April 13, 1865, Raleigh, the last unoccupied state capital in the faded Confederacy,
quietly fell to Union Gen. William T. Sherman. The city's leaders had chosen to surrender the town, even as
the last bedraggled survivors of the Confederate army were fleeing westward along what is now Chapel
Hill Road. Robert E. Lee had surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia, leaving only Confederate Gen.
Joseph E. Johnston with a Southern army in the field. .
The war, in spite of what the history books say, did not end at Appomattox Court House. Even as the
survivors of Lee's army were beginning to straggle homeward, Rebel soldiers were digging some of the last
breastworks and rifle pits of the war. The remains of those pits are behind what is now the Morrisville
Town Hall. .
Federal troops in pursuit of the Rebels stopped near what is now the multiscreen movie theater on
Chapel Hill Road to unlimber their cannons and open fire. .
Men on both sides would fall as the fighting surged back and forth through Morrisville until finally the
Rebel troops pulled back, one force heading for Chapel Hill and the other heading for Hillsborough. The
federal troops, after giving pursuit, fell back to Morrisville to camp for the night. .
It was on that night, April 13, 1865, that a Confederate calvary officer named Rowland Lowndes came
riding toward the Federal lines at Morrisville with a white flag of truce. He was carrying a message for
Sherman from Johnston, seeking arrangements "to terminate the existing war." .
Twelve days later, just west of Durham, the two generals met in the Bennett farmhouse and brought the
Civil War to a final, honorable and merciful end. .
There are markers and monuments aplenty memorializing those last few days of the war, but in
Morrisville, where the last fighting and dying took place, there is nothing. .
"The first step in saving what is left would be for the state to erect a historical marker in Morrisville,"
Dollar said. "Unfortunately, they dropped the ball on that. I made application for a marker, but the state
committee turned it down." .
Next week, Dollar will take his lonely campaign for a historical marker to the Town Board. It will cost
$1,600, he said, to commemorate the sacrifices both sides made there. .
Here's hoping the town's leaders will not let this chance to celebrate their history fade away. .