Chaffin's Bluff

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.

A Union attempt to take Richmond by water by the ironclad USS Monitor and other Union warships during the Peninsula Campaign failed to get past the defenses at this location during the Battle of Drewry's Bluff on May 15, 1862.

Chaffin's Bluff and Chaffin's Farm (later renamed Fort Harrison) were adjacent to each other. Oscar F. Baxter, a surgeon in the Confederate Army, told of his posting to Chaffin's Farm in a letter from Richmond dated June 6, 1864 to his twelve-year-old daughter. (Dr. Baxter, a native of Camden County, North Carolina, was a widower; his daughter was being cared for by relatives.)

I am about to get off for Chaffin's Farm, about 10 miles from Richmond. I received orders the 1st of June, but have been too unwell to obey them till this morning...I have been worked down and there is no end of it—I have never seen so many badly wounded men together as I have seen in the Yankee Hospital—800 or more all desperately wounded. My hands have been in dreadful condition from wounds received in operating on them. The fighting is still going on near Rich--

Two months later, in an August 18 letter to his daughter from "Post hospital, Chaffin's Bluff," Dr. Baxter describes the locale.

I have just learnt the probable cause of the miscarriage of your letters. I am at Chaffin's Bluff and not Chaffin's Farm, where I was first ordered. The Headquarters of both Bluff and farm are all in sight - half or threequarters of a mile apart...

In a letter to her dated the previous day (August 17), he hopes to get a few days furlough after this demonstration of the Yanks is over.

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