Chaffin's Bluff is located in Henrico County, Virginia, United States, along the James River. Chaffin's Bluff on the north side of the river opposite Drewry's Bluff, long-considered a major defense point of the river below Richmond. Located at a major bend in the river about eight miles south of Richmond, both bluffs were fortified by the Confederates early in the American Civil War. Two months later, in an August 18 letter to his daughter from "Post hospital, Chaffin's Bluff," Dr. Baxter describes the locale. Later in that letter, he describes the fighting going on around him.