It was soon evident that the South would have every advantage in the convention which an intelligent and skillful administration of parliamentary law could afford. Without showing unfairness, the presiding officer, especially in a large and boisterous assembly, can impart confidence and strength to the side with which he may sympathize. But, apart from any power to be derived from having the chairman of the convention, the South had a more palpable advantage from the mode in which the standing committees must, according to precedent, be constituted. As one member must be taken from each State, the Southern men obtained the control of all the committees, from the fact that the delegates from California and Oregon steadily voted with them. There were thirty-three States in the Union in 1860,--eighteen free and fifteen slave-holding. California and Oregon, uniting with the South, gave to that section seventeen, and left to the North but sixteen on all the committees. The Democratic delegates from the Pacific States assumed a weighty responsibility in thus giving to the Disunionists of the South preliminary control of the convention, by permitting them to shape authoritatively all the business to be submitted. It left the real majority of the convention in the attitude of a protesting minority. The Southern majority of one on the committees was fatal to Democratic success. In a still more important aspect its influence was in the highest degree prejudicial to the Union of the States.