The Homestead Act of 1862 was possibly one of the most consequential pieces of legislation in American history. Its passage was contentious, however, and often entangled in the sectional conflicts of the era. The idea that the United States federal government should grant land titles to settlers to encourage westward expansion first became popular in the 1850s after the conclusion of the U.S. War with Mexico (1846–48). Before the start of the American Civil War in 1861, the U.S. House of Representatives passed several homestead bills, none of which survived Southern opposition to become law. Northerners wanted to make large plots of western land available to individual farmers, while Southerners insisted the same lands should be available only to slaveowners. The House and Senate were finally able to pass the Homestead Act in 1862, when most of the Southern states had seceded from the United States.