Having sufficiently damaged the railroad, and effected the junction of the entire army, the general march was resumed on the 11th, each corps crossing the South Edisto by separate bridges, with orders to pause on the road leading from Orangeberg to Augusta, till it was certain that the Seventeenth Corps had got possession of Orangeburg.  This place was simply important as its occupation would sever the communications between Charleston and Columbia.  All the heads of column reached this road, known as the Edgefield road, during the 12th, and the Seventeenth Corps turned to the right, against Orangeburg.  When I reached the head of column opposite Orangeburg, I found Giles A. Smith’s division halted, with a battery unlimbered, exchanging shots with a party on the opposite side of the Edisto.  He reported that the bridge was gone, and that the river was deep and impassable.  I then directed General Blair to send a strong division below the town, some four or five miles, to effect a crossing there.  He laid his pontoon-bridge, but the bottom on the other side was overflowed, and the men had to wade through it, in places as deep as their waists.  I was with this division at the time, on foot, trying to pick my way across the overflowed bottom; but, as soon as the head of column reached the sand-hills, I knew that the enemy would not long remain in Orangeburg, and accordingly returned to my horse, on the west bank, and rode rapidly up to where I had left Giles A. Smith.  I found him in possession of the broken bridge, abreast of the town, which he was repairing, and I was among the first to cross over and enter the town.  By and before the time either Force’s or Giles A. Smith’s skirmishers entered the place, several stores were on fire, and I am sure that some of the towns-people told me that a Jew merchant had set fire to his own cotton and store, and from this the fire had spread.  This, however, was soon put out, and the Seventeenth Corps (General Blair) occupied the place during that night.  I remember to have visited a large hospital, on the hill near the railroad depot, which was occupied by the orphan children who had been removed from the asylum in Charleston.  We gave them protection, and, I think, some provisions.  The railroad and depot were destroyed by order, and no doubt a good deal of cotton was burned, for we all regarded cotton as hostile property, a thing to be destroyed.  General Blair was ordered to break up this railroad, forward to the point where it crossed the Santee, and then to turn for Columbia.  On the morning of the 13th I again joined the Fifteenth Corps, which crossed the North Edisto by Snilling’s Bridge, and moved straight for Columbia, around the head of Caw-Caw Swamp.  Orders were sent to all the columns to turn for Columbia, where it was supposed the enemy had concentrated all the men they could from Charleston, Augusta, and even from Virginia.  That night I was with the Fifteenth Corps, twenty-one