On May 3, 1863, 10,000 Confederate troops took position astride the Orange Plank Road as 20,000 Union soldiers under General John Sedgwick, marching westward from Fredericksburg, attacked them in an effort to break through and strike the rear of Lee’s army at Chancellorsville. Fighting raged along the ridge for several hundred yards, and its climax centered on Salem Church, where Sedgwick’s Federals broke through the Southern line while swarming up the ridge, but the Confederates counterattacked, sealed the breach, and drove the Federals back down the slope. The Federals did not return, and the next day General Lee arrived with reinforcements, enveloped them, and pushed them across the Rappahannock, preserving his position at Chancellorsville and clinching his triumph there, though he lamented that the Federal army had escaped at all.