In January 1865, Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman's army of 60,000 Union soldiers invaded South Carolina with the goals of linking up with Ulysses S. Grant's forces opposing Robert E. Lee's Confederates in Virginia and destroying the South's ability and will to support troops in the field. Here, on February 2-3, 1865, part of Sherman's army clashed with Confederate troops along the Salkehatchie River. In the two-day battle of Rivers Bridge, Confederates made the most determined resistance to Sherman's march through South Carolina. Sherman's army moved in two wings to confuse the Confederates and prevent them from concentrating their forces, and his troops marched inland to cross the state's rivers where they narrowed instead of along the coast where they ran through wide marshes. Most of the soldiers who fought at Rivers Bridge were veterans, and years of bloody combat had taught them lessons for surviving on the battlefield that they applied here.