Amboy, Lansing and Traverse Bay Railroad given to railroads (which would then re-sell these lands for a profit) in exchange for constructing certain routes. At the heart of Michigan's network at the time were the Michigan Central Railroad and the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway, both of which ran east-west across the southern Lower Peninsula. As proposed in the route would run from "Amboy by Hillsdale and Lansing, and from Grand Rapids to some point on or near Traverse Bay." This route would bisect the existing railroad network and provide a railroad connection to Lansing, the new state capital. Almost immediately local interests intervened: 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