1990 Lincoln Town Car

Electrical problem
1990 Lincoln Town Car V8 Automatic 229000 miles

my lincoln while stopped one day shut down so I had the altenator and the belts replaced. The battery and distributor cap, rotory button, wires and plugs are all less than a year old. Over the last two months I have been having problems with it starting. So I had the fuel pump checked out. I planned on having it replaced, but yesterday I went out just to check the relay for the fuel pump(to be on the safe side). I popped the hood, turned the keys and saw a small stream of smoke coming from the battery, then the entire drivers panel went dead. There was no power at all. Could all of this (fuel pump and the smoke) be related? Where do I begin to look to fix the problem? And it was just one of the battery cables that was smoking.