equate protection for property; that is, "protection sufficient to
protect animate property." Any other protection would be a delusion
and a cheat. If the territorial legislature refused such protection,
he for one would demand it of Congress. He dissented altogether from
the doctrine of the Senator from Illinois, that by non-action, or
unfriendly legislation a Territory could annul a decision of the
Supreme Court and exclude slavery. That was mistaking power for right.
"What I want to know is, whether you will interpose against power and
in favor of right.... If the Territorial Legislature refuses to act,
will you act?... If it pass laws hostile to slavery, will you annul
them, and substitute laws favoring slavery in their stead?" "What I
and my people ask is action; positive, unqualified action. Our
understanding of the doctrine of non-intervention was, that you were
not to intervene against us, but I never understood that we could have
any compromise or understanding here which could release Congress from
an obligation imposed on it by the Constitution of the United
States."[783]

Reluctant as Douglas must have been to accentuate the differences
between himself and the Southern Democrats, he could not remain
silent, for silence would be misconstrued. With all the tact which he
could muster out of a not too abundant store, he sought to conciliate,
without yielding his own opinions. It was a futile effort. At the very
outset he was forced to deny the right of slave property to other
protection than common property. Thence he passed with wider and wider
divergence from the Southern position over the familiar ground of
popular sovereignty. To the specific demands which Brown had voiced,
he replied that Congress had never passed an act creating a criminal
code for any organized Territory, nor any law protecting any species
of property. Congress had left these matters to the territorial
legislatures. Why, then, make an exception of slave property? The
Supreme Court had made no such distinction. "I know," said Douglas, in
a tone little calculated to soothe the feelings of his opponents, "I
know that some gentlemen do not like the doctrine of non-intervention
as well as they once did. It is now becoming fashionable to talk
sneeringly of 'your doctrine of non-intervention,' Sir, that doctrine
has been a fundamental article in the Democratic creed for years."
"If you repudiate the doctrine of non-intervention and form a slave