Prince R. Rivers (c. 1824–1887) was a former enslaved man from South Carolina who served as a soldier in the Union Army and as a state politician during the Reconstruction era.

Rivers stole one of Stuart's horses and rode through the Confederate lines to Beaufort, which was occupied by Union troops.

[4] Rivers was among the slaves (and their families) declared free in 1862 by Union General David Hunter under Congress' Confiscation Act of 1861.

[2] In 1863, Rivers became a non-commissioned officer in the newly formed 1st South Carolina Volunteers of the United States Colored Troops.

His commanding officer, Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, wanted to promote him to a commissioned rank but was prevented by his superiors because of Rivers' race.

After the war, Rivers returned to the Edgefield District, eventually settling on a farm outside Hamburg, which became a black-majority town in this period, with a thriving community.

[6] In 1876, Prince Rivers was the judge in a hearing in Hamburg related to events on July 4, when white farmers claimed that an all-black unit of the National Guard blocked the street by their parade on Independence Day.

Though Rivers tried in a separate meeting to persuade the local Guard militia to give up their weapons, and the white paramilitary to back down, his efforts failed.

It was settled in a national compromise by which the Republican administration agreed to withdraw federal troops from the South, officially ending Reconstruction.