An eerie and unexplained total darkness enveloped the entire New England region of the United States, centered heavily over Boston, Massachusetts, starting at midday. The sky turned an intense reddish-bronze and then pitch black, forcing people to use candles at noon, while animals went to sleep and birds went silent. While modern scientists have proved it was caused by massive, smoke-heavy forest fires in Canada blending with fog, the deeply religious local population viewed the event as an explicit omen of the literal Day of Judgment.

This terrifying event entered deeply into early American folklore, religious poetry, and literature. It was famously commemorated in a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier entitled 'Abraham Davenport', which celebrates the steadfastness of a lawmaker who refused to panic during the terrifying darkness, establishing a classic American literary motif of civic duty over religious panic.