MORRISVILLE - Today, as hundreds of motorists dash through this crossroads town, enduring a frustrating column of stop-and-go traffic, it's hard to imagine the stampede that took place here exactly 146 years ago.

It began early, west of Raleigh and moved toward Morrisville, not unlike the morning rush hour toward the glass towers of Research Triangle Park.

A column of Union cavalry and troops under Gen. Judson Kilpatrick's command - fresh from capturing Raleigh - chased Southern Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's retreating army along what is now Chapel Hill Road to the small village of Morrisville Station on April 13, 1865.

With fighting all around, a rebel train at the depot attempted to flee with supplies and wounded soldiers. Union artillery shelled the town to halt its departure.

The bloody stain of the Civil War - which began 150 years ago Tuesday, when shots were fired on Fort Sumter in South Carolina - came to the Triangle in the final days of the conflict.

Two days after the Morrisville skirmish, Johnston sent an emissary to deliver a white flag of surrender to the federal forces "in order to stop the further effusion of blood and devastation of property," he wrote.

The negotiated surrender, which occurred April 26, 1865, at Bennett Place outside Durham, was the largest in the war's history.

Historian Ernest Dollar first researched Morrisville's role in the war years ago as a college student. Ever since, he led the charge to memorialize and preserve Morrisville battlefield, one of the most unrecognized Civil War sites in the nation.

"It's a chapter that's long been forgotten," Dollar said, noting common perception that the war ended with Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender April 9, 1865, at the Appomattox Court House.

The remains of Confederate rifle pits are still evident behind Morrisville Town Hall but development now occupies much of the land once contested by the competing armies.

"People always ask me, 'Where's the battlefield?'" Dollar said. "If you're standing in the old part of Morrisville, you're standing on the battlefield."

The town is intent on making sure its history is not forgotten.

Morrisville recently hired Dollar to produce two documentaries about the town's past and its place in the Civil War as part of a history center planned for Town Hall.

"It's an important community function because we've grown so much in the last decade ... and we are trying to help the new residents get connected to this place," said Ben Hitchings, the town's planning director.

The town also is now listed on the Civil War Trails map, which Dollar suggested could bring more tourists to the area.

"As a historian, no one has really turned over the rocks," said Dollar, a Durham native and the director of the Preservation Society of Chapel Hill. "When I pick up these rocks, I find all these pieces of Morrisville history that we didn't know about."

Morrisville will recognize its past in a June event that commemorates the month in 1861 when the men of Morrisville mustered in the yard of the Williamson Page house before leaving to fight in the war.

The unit was called the "North Carolina Grays" and later referred to as the "Cedar Fork Rifles."

The town plans to debut the documentaries and host a Civil War reenactment to celebrate the opening the history center.

Noting the anniversary, Dollar said, "What better time to push this effort?"