the bridge until the arrival of the Fifteenth Corps. An old negro told me this morning that Angley's Post-Office was discontinued thirty or forty years ago and the name had been forgotten.

The artillery fired with excellent precision, though in the dark, as the marks this morning show. I have no casualties to report.

I am, captain, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

M. F. FORCE,

Brigadier-General, Commanding Third Division.

Captain C. CADLE, Jr.,

Assistant Adjutant-General, Seventeenth Army Corps.

HDQRS. THIRD DIVISION, SEVENTEENTH ARMY CORPS,
In the Field, S. C., February 14, 1865.

CAPTAIN: I have the honor to state that on the 11th instant I broke camp at 7 a.m., and reached the North Fork of the Edisto, fourteen miles, at just noon, driving the enemy, with the aid of the Ninth Illinois Mounted Infantry, so rapidly over the last three miles as to save all the bridges (six) over the swamp bordering the River as to save all bridge over the River with musketry in time to prevent its destruction. A battery and rifle-pit covering the road and bridge from the opposite side prevented a crossing there. I at once extended a skirmish line up and down stream in the swamp bordering the River and sent out parties to discover some practicable crossing. Colonel Wiles, commanding Second Brigade, found a narrow place about a mile above, where he felled a tree and, in the dark, crossed a captain and seventeen men to solid land on the farther side. A party from the Thirteenth Illinois, First Brigade, found a solid field reaching to the River about a mile below, with swampy shore on the farther side. A foraging party found a road crossing, undefended, about two miles above. After dark a party of the enemy, under cover of a ravine leading from their rifle-pit to the bridge, set the bridge on fire and partially destroyed it. One of this party was killed. In the night I built a road for pontoon wagons to the lower possible crossing. My casualties were 1 private (Twentieth Ohio) slightly and 1 (Sixty-eighth Ohio) severely wounded. The enemy are known to have lost 6 killed, 14 wounded, and 6 captured.

On the morning of the 12th, being ordered to cross at the lowest point, the laying of pontoons was begun at 11 a.m. In three hours the division was on the farther side in line; the front line advanced half a mile. The enemy shelled my skirmish line with one field piece and feeble musketry. I advanced the First Brigade, Colonel C. Fairchild, Sixteenth Wisconsin, upon the enemy's position, and through Orangeburg to the railroad. The skirmish line fire upon a train of cars loaded with soldiers, and upon the rear of their columns, retreating toward Columbia. Placing the Twelfth Wisconsin, Colonel Proudfit, in charge of the town, on provost duty, I at once set the rest of the brigade to work destroying the railroad. Meanwhile the Second Brigade, Colonel Wiles, proceeded directly east from the crossing and struck the railroad two miles below the First Brigade. These two miles of road were destroyed by the division before going into camp, burning all the ties, twisting some, but simply bending most, of the rails. This day there were no casualties. The force defending Orangeburg appears to have been Johnson's (formerly Stovall's) Palmer's, and Pettus' brigades, of Lee's corps, and some of Young's cavalry. The last arrived from Can-