Prince Rivers

LOC

Quick Facts

Significance:

Prominent Black Soldier in the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, Reconstruction Era Politician

Place of Birth:

Beaufort, South Carolina

Date of Birth:

Around 1824

Place of Death:

Columbia, South Carolina

Date of Death:

1887

Place of Burial:

Columbia, South Carolina

Cemetery Name:

Randolph Cemetery

Prince Rivers was born in the early to mid 1820s, likely near Beaufort, South Carolina. He was enslaved by Henry M. Stuart, a prominent doctor and landowner in the region. Rivers was an enslaved coachman and was well known throughout Beaufort’s Black community.

After the Battle of Port Royal, Stuart fled to Edgefield County, South Carolina, taking Rivers with him. At some point, Prince Rivers escaped and returned on his own to Beaufort County, where he was among the earliest recruits in the 1st South Carolina Volunteers.

Rivers was literate, and quickly became a leader among the soldiers. He served as the provost and was named the color sergeant for the regiment – charging with carrying the American flag at the head of the regiment. In the fall of 1862, he and another soldier were sent to Pennsylvania to help raise funds for the Port Royal Experiment, and on January 1, 1863, he was presented with the regiment’s flag. Rivers recognized that property ownership would be the key to prosperity in a postwar world, so he organized soldiers of the 1^st South Carolina Volunteers to pool their money and buy properties at the tax auctions happening around Beaufort. Prince Rivers himself purchased four properties in downtown alone. Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson was close with Rivers, and often spoke highly of him, writing “There is not a white officer in this regiment who has more administrative ability, or more absolute authority over the men…if there should ever be a black monarchy in South Carolina, he will be its king.”

At the end of the war, Rivers, at least for a brief period, operated a small liquor store along Cartaret Street in downtown Beaufort, but soon moved back up to Edgefield County, near Augusta, GA. He got involved in local politics, serving as a representative for Edgefield County in the Reconstruction era South Carolina Legislature.  He was one of the co-founders of Aiken County, South Carolina, and quickly became one of the most powerful politicians in Hamburg, SC.

This made Rivers a target for the Red Shirts, in the run up to the 1876 gubernatorial election. The Red Shirts targeted Hamburg in what became known as the Hamburg Massacre. Rivers was a trial judge overseeing the prosecution of the Red Shirts but was driven from power by terrorists seeking to overthrow the Reconstruction era Black majority in South Carolina politics. Rivers wrote, “"I see that the President had ordered the troops from the State House...Is there any hopes for the Republican Party of South Carolina?"

Driven from power, Rivers returned to life as a laborer, eventually driving a carriage for meager wages – the same work he had done while enslaved before the war. He died in 1887 and is buried in an unmarked grave at Randolph Cemetery in Columbia, SC.