Rivers' Bridge was a Civil War engagement fought in South Carolina, 1865. It was a Union victory.
On February 2, a Confederate force under McLaws held the crossings of the Salkehatchie River against the advance of the right wing of Sherman's Army. Federal soldiers began building bridges across the swamp to bypass the road block. In the meantime, Union columns worked to get on the Confederates' flanks and rear. On February 3, two Union brigades waded the swamp downstream and assaulted McLaws's right. McLaws retreated toward Branchville after stalling Sherman's advance for only one day.
During the American Civil War, forces clashed at Rivers' Bridge on February 3, 1865, an engagement also referred to as the Action at Rivers' Bridge.
As Sherman moved his armies northward through South Carolina, roughly 1,200 Confederate troops commanded by McLaws took up position where the road crossed the Salkehatchie River. On February 2, Union engineers set to work constructing bridges meant to carry the advance around McLaws's line. The following day brought a flanking maneuver, as two brigades under Blair pushed through swampy terrain and struck the Confederate position from the side. Having delayed Sherman for only a single day, McLaws pulled his men back in the direction of Branchville, allowing the Union columns to resume their push north toward Columbia, the state capital.
Local men from surrounding towns gathered up the Confederate fallen from Rivers Bridge in 1876, placing them together in a single grave roughly a mile away from where the fighting had occurred. This act marked the start of a yearly custom honoring the battle. Ownership of the battlefield eventually passed to the Rivers Bridge Memorial Association, which handed the property over to South Carolina in 1945 so it could become a state park. Today the location lives on through the Rivers Bridge State Historic Site.
At the historic site, visitors can still see the earthworks the Confederate defenders relied on for cover. However, the bluff above the river, once home to several of these fortifications, no longer looks as it once did. Late in the 19th century, a logging railroad running alongside the Salkehatchie River reshaped that portion of the landscape considerably.
This page covers Rivers' Bridge. A full Aubrey report for the area pulls together this battle alongside historic sites, land records, and everything else the record holds within a few miles:
Every location is different. Not every section appears for every place, only what the historical record actually holds turns up in a report.
The account on this page is written by Aubrey Research from cited sources. Wikipedia is cited as a reference; its text is not reproduced.
Aubrey generates in-depth historical research for any location in the US, drawing on NRHP records, battlefield archives, census history and geological data to tell the full story of a place.