Commander: Major General Lafayette McLaws Work in progress While Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman's Union armies marched north across South Carolina, about 1,200 Confederates under Maj. Gen. Lafayette McLaws were posted at the crossing on the Salkehatchie River.

Union soldiers began to build bridges to bypass McLaws on February 2.

The next day two brigades under Maj. Gen. Francis P. Blair waded through the swamp and flanked the Confederates.

In 1876 men from nearby communities reburied the Confederate dead from Rivers Bridge in a mass grave about a mile from the battlefield and began a tradition of annually commemorating the battle.

The Rivers Bridge Memorial Association eventually obtained the battlefield and in 1945 turned the site over to South Carolina for a state park.