The Battle of Hoke's Run, also known as the Battle of Falling Waters or Battle of Hainesville, took place on July 2, 1861, in Berkeley County, Virginia (now West Virginia) as part of the Manassas campaign of the American Civil War. Notable as an early engagement of Confederate Colonel Thomas J. Jackson and his Brigade of Virginia Volunteers, nineteen days before their famous nickname would originate, this brief skirmish was hailed by both sides as a stern lesson to the other. Acting precisely upon the orders of a superior officer about how to operate in the face of superior numbers, Jackson's Confederate forces resisted General Robert Patterson's Union forces briefly and then slowly retreated over several miles.
The Department of Pennsylvania represented the Union Army at the Battle of Hoke's Run during the outset of the American Civil War. Although the entire force crossed the Potomac River into Virginia, the First and Sixth Brigades were primarily engaged.
The following Confederate Army units and commanders fought in the Battle of Hoke's Run.
On July 2, Maj. Gen. Robert Patterson's division crossed the Potomac River near Williamsport, Maryland and marched on the main road to Martinsburg. Near Hoke's Run, the Union brigades of Cols. John J. Abercrombie and George H. Thomas encountered regiments of Col. Thomas J. Jackson's Confederate brigade, driving them back slowly. Jackson accomplished his orders to delay the Federal advance, withdrawing before Patterson's larger force.
Estimates of casualties sustained during the battle vary. The National Park Service quotes Union as 23 and Confederate as 91 (without differentiating types of casualties). Kennedy cites 75 Union deaths and 25 Confederate deaths. In his Official Report, Major-General Robert Patterson states the number of Confederate deaths as "over sixty" but does not describe Union casualties. One Confederate battle flag was captured by the First Wisconsin, but the surrendering Confederate regiment is not identified.
First Wisconsin Infantry: 1 killed, 5 wounded, 1 captured.
Eleventh Pennsylvania Infantry: 1 killed, 10 wounded, none captured.
Fifteenth Pennsylvania Infantry: 1 wounded, 35 captured (six of whom died in Confederate prisons within nine months).
14th Pennsylvania: 12 Captured (the 1st Virginia Cavalry took 47 prisoners from the company A, 14th and company I, 15th Pennsylvania)
McMullen's Rangers: 1 killed and 1 wounded (from the Sunbury American)
Total casualties for Union force: 3 killed, 17 wounded, and 50 captured
2nd Virginia Infantry: no record/report (casualties unknown)
Total casualties for Confederate force (incomplete): 11 killed, 12 wounded
The American Civil War (1861–1865) was the deadliest conflict in American history, killing an estimated 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilians. The Confederate States of America, formed by eleven seceding Southern states, faced the Union in four years of warfare across 23 states and territories. Major engagements included First and Second Bull Run, Antietam (the bloodiest single day in American history, September 17, 1862), Chancellorsville, Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), Vicksburg (surrendered July 4, 1863), and Sherman's March through Georgia and the Carolinas (1864–1865). President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, transforming the war's stated purpose to include the abolition of slavery and enabling the enlistment of approximately 180,000 Black men in the United States Colored Troops. Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. The war resolved the question of secession and ended American slavery, though Reconstruction would face sustained resistance in its attempt to secure civil rights for formerly enslaved people.
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