The connections he established during the Revolutionary War aided his efforts in forming in 1788 a syndicate with Nathaniel Gorham, also a former member of the Federal Constitutional Convention. They organized a company of speculators, retaining 82 shares for themselves, and brought in competing companies to join in their effort. They sold 15 shares to the Niagara Company, composed of Colonel John Butler, Samuel Street, and other Tory friends of the Indians, and another 23 shares were divided among 21 persons. Following the American Revolution, there remained a confusing collection of contradictory royal charters from James I, Charles I, and Charles II, mixed with a succession of treaties with the Dutch and with the Indians, which made the legal situation intractable. Massachusetts owned land west of the "Preemption Line" in New York that was disconnected geographically from the rest of the state. New York and Massachusetts reached a compromise settling their competing claims for the region on December 1786 with the signing of the Treaty of Hartford. The syndicate lobbied for a law that was passed by the Massachusetts legislature that enabled them to buy land, payable over three years, using Massachusetts Consolidated Scrip, which was worth about 20 cents on a dollar at the time.