After some preliminary remarks, Mr. Samuels moved the adoption of the minority report as a substitute for that of the majority. This gave rise to an earnest and excited debate. The difference between the parties was radical and irreconcilable. The South insisted that the Cincinnati platform, whose true construction in regard to slavery in the Territories had always been denied by a portion of the Democratic party, should be explained and settled by an express recognition of the principles decided by the Supreme Court. The North, on the other hand, refused to recognize this decision, and still maintained the power to be inherent in the people of a Territory to deal with the question of slavery according to their own discretion. The vote was then taken, and the minority report was substituted for that of the majority by a vote of one hundred and sixty-five to one hundred and thirty-eight. The delegates from the six New England States, as well as from New York, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota, fourteen free States, cast their entire vote in favor of the minority report. New Jersey and Pennsylvania alone among the free States east of the Rocky Mountains, refused to vote as States, but their delegates voted as individuals. The means employed to attain this end were skillfully devised by the minority of the Pennsylvania delegation in favor of nominating Mr. Douglas. The entire delegation had, strangely enough, placed this power in their hands, by selecting two of their number, Messrs. Cessna and Wright, to represent the whole on the two most important committees of the Convention—that of organization and that of resolutions. These gentlemen, by adroitness and parliamentary tact, succeeded in abrogating the former practice of casting the vote of the State as a unit. In this manner, whilst New York indorsed with her entire thirty-five votes the peculiar views of Mr. Douglas, notwithstanding there was in her delegation a majority of only five votes in their favor on the question of Territorial sovereignty, the effective strength of Pennsylvania recognizing the judgment of the Supreme Court, was reduced to three votes, this being the majority of fifteen on the one side over twelve on the other.