Another wiring dilemma....help please!

First off, 1996 Cherokee sport 4.0, auto trans, and I tried to search for this. Here's the short story: So I was using my right turn signal a few days ago and all of a sudden my column starts smoking from where the tilt lever is. A fuse or something blew, and the turn signals stopped working completely, along with my dash lights, and about half of the fuses in my fuse panel under the dash. The wiring harness that goes to my ignition switch has a couple of wires that are pretty charred where they leave the connector to the switch, so I figured this was the problem. Tried to replace it, no changes, and now a couple of the mini fuses under the hood don't have power to them at all. One of them being the auto trans wiring fuse, which leads to the trans basically not working. I keep reading that there are fusible links somewhere under the hood but I have no clue where, and in the owners manual it says that they replaced all of the fusible links with maxi fuses under the hood sometime in the mid 90s. If that is the case, all of mine are in good condition but I still can't figure out where the break in the power is. Anybody got a clue on where to go from here? I've dug into quite a bit and don't seem to be getting anywhere. Hopefully somebody else has ran across this and knows what is going on. Thanks in advance for any help.

I think you have two 60 amp MAXI fuses in the PDC, have you tested both of them?

It sounds like you have a dead short in the column--the smoking--and that is where you should start your repairs. If you restore power without fixing the short, well, you will probably just be wasting fuses. It might be easiest to pick up a new column from the salvage yard.

PDC? Sorry, I don't know that one. If its the underhood fuse and relay box then yep, I checked every fuse in the box, that's how I found out about the 2 mini fuses that aren't getting power.
As far as the column, the smoking was coming from the connector right where it connects to the ignition/key switch. If there was a short in the column wouldn't it happen somewhere lower than that? So then I would assume the problem is in the ignition switch itself and not somewhere else down the column, right? Either way, I put a salvage ignition switch in it but it doesn't make a difference, I still don't get power to half of my fuses, there has to be something else in the circuit that's broken somewhere....

PDC-power distribution center (underhood fuse panel). if the wire shorts, the amps skyrocket thru the wire. the entire wire has all those amps, so the place with the most resistance is most likely to smoke (the connector). a plain wire shorted, the whole wire would eventually smoke.

im guessing the fuses with no power are switched/acc power? the acc power wire from the switch might have fried open, or you might have a bad switch. id check a wiring diagram and go from there. try checking for continuity to ground on the ignition switch wires for shorts (continuity) again, a wiring diagram is a must have!