To encourage the extension of railroads into new and thinly settled territories, and to thus hasten their settlement and the development of their resources, the people of the United States began at the commencement of this period to favor the policy of land grants. Such grants had repeatedly been made to roads and canals prior to the crisis of 1837. The first railroad that received a land grant was the Illinois Central. The scheme was proposed as early as 1836, but the act making the grant was not passed until September 20, 1850. Other grants followed in 1852 in Missouri, in 1853 in Arkansas, in 1856 in Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Florida and Louisiana. As a rule these lands were granted by the National Government to the States, and by them to the railroads. The land grants made during President Fillmore's administration amounted to eight million, and those made during Pierce's administration to nineteen million acres. The financial crisis of 1857 and the War of the Rebellion again checked railroad building, but this period developed a new phase of railroad enterprise as well as of the land grant policy. In those times of national trial a railroad to the Pacific Coast seemed a political necessity. The project of connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans by a line of railroads was first brought prominently before the American people by Asa Whitney of New York. At a meeting held under his auspices in Philadelphia on the 23d day of December, 1846, a movement was inaugurated for the purpose of interesting the people in this enterprise and securing the aid of the government for its accomplishment. Various plans were urged, and earnest discussions followed, in which the ablest minds of the nation participated. The continual agitation of the subject finally led, on the 1st of July, 1862, to the passage by Congress of an act incorporating the Union Pacific Railway Company and the adoption of the central route. The Union and the Central Pacific companies received a virtual money subsidy of $30,000,000 and a land grant aggregating nearly twenty-three million acres, a domain almost equal to the State of Indiana. Other direct grants of territorial lands soon followed. The Northern Pacific received, just before the close of the war, a grant of forty-seven million acres of land. In the Southwest public lands were also freely given to new Pacific lines. The various grants made to railroads comprise no less than 300,000 square miles, equal to four and a half times the area of New England, or six times that of the State of New York, or equal to the total area of Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio. Where these grants were not deemed sufficient inducement for the construction of roads, counties, cities and towns freely voted subsidies, while private citizens made donations to or subscribed for the securities of the new railroads.