the violence, and the coup, with a "noble" narrative, comparing the events to the cause of the "Men of the Cape Fear" during the American Revolution. For many whites, the gallant framing remained, as the perpetrators of the coup were deemed to be "revolutionary" heroes who led an "insurrection" against a "riotous" black menace. For example, immediately, following the coup, the coup participants began reshaping the language of the events. For example, William Parsley, a former Confederate Lieutenant-Colonel, wrote of Wilmington's blacks: Supporting that account, Mr. Kramer, a white Wilmington alderman, added: Conversely, the black survivors and community maintained that the event was a "massacre". A survivor of the incident, who fled the city, Rev. Charles S. Morris, told his account of the event before the International Association of Colored Clergymen in January 1899: Revisionists dispute the white supremacist aspect of the event often by 1) denying the culpability of the white actors and 2) framing the cause of the white actors as noble. Arguments that deny culpability, such as equating blame onto blacks, shifts blame away from the white actors and places it onto black residents and their white allies. "Noble" arguments stress that the white actors were not bad people, but honorable souls who were only fighting for "law and order". By not recognizing that the white actors sought "law and order" through criminality and violence, the goodness, valor and values of their ancestors remain affirmed. The branding of the event as a "riot", "insurrection", "rebellion", "revolution", or "conflict", largely remained until the late 20th century due to the accounts of black survivors being minimized, ignored and omitted – as with The Daily Record destroyed, there were no media outlets to provide recorded accounts of blacks – and due to the South's adoption of Jubal Early's literary and cultural point of view of The Lost Cause, in which violence perpetuated by whites, across American Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Jim Crow era, evolved into a language of vindication and renewal. The narrative of The Lost Cause allowed the North and the South to emotionally re-unify. It brought sentimentalism, by political argument, and recurrent celebrations, rituals and public monuments that allowed Southern whites to reconcile their regional pride with their Americanness. It also provided conservative traditions and a model of masculine devotion and courage in an age of gender anxieties and ruthless material striving. However, historians have argued that