They would leave it to the people in convention assembled, when framing a State constitution, to determine the question of slavery for themselves.

They had no purpose but to have a vexed question settled, and to put the Democratic party on a clear unclouded platform, not a doubled-faced one--one face to the North and one face to the South.
Henry B.Payne, of Ohio, presented and defended the report of the minority.[2] It asserted that all questions in regard to property in States or Territories were judicial in their character, and that the Democratic party would abide by past and future decisions of the Supreme Court concerning them.

Mr.Payne explained that while the majority report was supported by 15 slave and two free-States,[3] representing 127 electoral votes, the minority report was indorsed by 15 free-States,[4] representing 176 electoral votes.

He argued that, by the universal consent of the Democratic party, the Cincinnati platform referred this question of slavery to the people of the Territories, declaring that Congress should in no event intervene one way or the other, and that all controversies should be settled by the courts.

Now the proposition of the majority report was to make a complete retraction of those two cardinal doctrines of the Cincinnati platform.