Cutler was invited to dinners and teas, where his engaging manner made him the center of attraction. He used every occasion as a means of setting before the members the great advantages that would follow consummation of the proposed plan. In the first place, Congress could thus pay a large amount of the national debt to its most worthy creditors without money. Again, it would open up the Northwest to settlement, thus insuring large sales of land to civilians. Further, it would establish a barrier between older settlements and the western Indians, thus furnishing protection without expense to the government. In three or four days he had so fully succeeded in enlisting the favor of Congress that by July 9 a new committee was appointed to prepare a frame of government for the territory. It was at this point that the ordinance under consideration bore so little resemblance to the final document which was adopted four days later. This committee was composed of Carrington, Nathan Dane of Massachusetts, Richard Henry Lee and two others. It is quite probable that the members of this committee were selected in accordance with Cutler’s wishes. The next morning after the committee was appointed, it called Cutler into its councils, having previously sent him a copy of the ordinance, which had already passed two readings. He was asked to make suggestions and propose amendments, which he did, returning the paper to the committee with his suggestions. On July 10, he left for Philadelphia to visit his scientific correspondents, Franklin and Rush, and also to look in upon the Constitutional Convention, which was then in session. The day following his departure, the committee presented to Congress a new ordinance prepared in accordance with Cutler’s suggestions. If Force could have had access to Cutler’s diary in writing up the history of the Ordinance of 1787, the mystery of the radical changes that he found between the ninth and the eleventh of July would have been solved. On the eighteenth Cutler was again in New York. On the nineteenth he made this entry in his diary: “Called on members of Congress very early in the morning, and was furnished with the ordinance establishing a government in the western Federal territory. It is, in a degree, new modeled. The amendments I proposed have all been made except one, and that is better qualified.” The frame of government having been satisfactorily settled, Congress proceeded to state the conditions on which the sale of lands should be based. On the twentieth these terms were shown to Cutler, who rejected them. He said: “I informed the committee that I should not contract on the terms proposed; that I should greatly prefer purchasing lands from some of the states, who would give incomparably better terms; and therefore proposed to leave the city immediately.”