Michigan State Capitol Lansing following a decision made March 17, 1847, to move the capital from Detroit to Lansing. The Detroit building then became a public school (the Union School, at one time the city's only high school) and library until it burned in 1893. The 1835 Michigan Constitution provided that: Prior to 1847, Detroit fought to maintain the Capitol within its jurisdiction, but communities in the growing western part of the state had many reasons for wanting a move inland, including the need to increase defensibility by moving the state government away from the Canada–US border. Detroit had been occupied during the
Robert Lansing , Lansing backed Woodrow Wilson in issuing three notes of protest to the German government. William Jennings Bryan resigned as Secretary of State following Wilson's second note, which Bryan considered too belligerent. Lansing replaced Bryan, and said in his memoirs that following the "Lusitania" tragedy he always had the "conviction that we would ultimately become the ally of Britain". In 1916 Lansing hired a handful of men who became the State Department's first special agents in the new Bureau of Secret Intelligence. These agents were initially used to observe the activities of the Central Powers in America, and later to