Per Johnson’s instructions, Stanbery announced in early June that no military commander had the right to remove any civil office-holder. And since the military possessed neither the education nor the training for the delicate task of interpreting the law, the military was entitled to exercise only a very limited authority in the districts. The civil governments of the South must stand; their state governments alone could enforce the Civil Rights Act—not ignorant military commanders, as Stanbery alluded to the district generals, deliberately insulting them. Stanbery also claimed that former
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