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The Quartering Act is a name that is given to a minimum of two Acts of Parliament in the 18th-century. These Quartering Acts were put into circulation by the Parliament of Great Britain and they ordered local governments of the American colonies to provide a place to stay and provisions for British soldiers that were required in the area. Each of the Quartering Acts were amendments to the Mutiny Act and had to be renewed annually by Parliament. They were originally used as a response to issues that arose during the French and Indian War and later became a source of tension between the inhabitants of the Thirteen Colonies and the government in London.

Quartering Act of 1765

Lieutenant-General Thomas Gage, commander-in-chief of forces in British North America, and other British officers who had fought in the French and Indian War, had found it hard to persuade colonial assemblies to pay for quartering and provisioning of troops on the march. The purpose of these laws was to take back hold of the colonies. Therefore, he asked Parliament to do something. Most colonies had supplied provisions during the war, but the issue was disputed in peacetime. The Province of New York was their headquarters, because the assembly had passed an Act to provide for the quartering of British regulars, but it expired on January 2, 1764, The result was the Quartering Act of 1765, which went far beyond what Gage had requested. No standing army had been kept in the colonies before the French and Indian War, so the colonies asked why a standing army was needed after the French had been defeated.

This first Quartering Act (citation 5 Geo. III c. 33) was given Royal Assent on March 24, 1765, and provided that Great Britain would house its soldiers in American barracks and public houses, as by the Mutiny Act of 1765, but if its soldiers outnumbered the housing available, would quarter them "in inns, livery stables, ale houses, victualing houses, and the houses of sellers of wine and houses of persons selling of rum, brandy, strong water, cider or metheglin", and if numbers required in "uninhabited houses, outhouses, barns, or other buildings." Colonial authorities were required to pay the cost of housing and feeding these troops.

When 1,500 British troops arrived at New York City in 1766 the New York Provincial Assembly refused to comply with the Quartering Act and did not supply billeting for the troops. The troops had to remain on their ships. With its great impact on the city, a skirmish occurred in which one colonist was wounded following the Assembly's refusal to provide quartering. For failure to comply with the Quartering Act, Parliament suspended the Province of New York's Governor and legislature in 1767 and 1769, but never carried it out, since the Assembly soon agreed to contribute money toward the quartering of troops; the New York Assembly allocated funds for the quartering of British troops in 1771.

The Quartering Act was circumvented in all colonies other than Pennsylvania.

This Act expired on March 24, 1767.

Quartering Act of 1774

An amendment to the original Quartering Act (citation 14 George. III c. 54) was passed on June 2, 1774. This act was passed and enforced, along with many others, known by the colonists as the 'Intolerable Acts'. They were a reaction to the Boston Tea Party and that aimed at quelling the radicalism in Massachusetts;. In the previous Act, the colonies had been required to provide housing for soldiers, but colonial legislatures had been uncooperative in doing so. The new Quartering Act similarly allowed a governor to house soldiers in other buildings,such as: barns, inns, among other unoccupied structures, if suitable quarters were not provided. It did not have the provision in the previous Act that soldiers be provided with provisions. The amendments made also created the requirement for the housing of troops to be a mutual agreement between the parties involved. Also if a government had laws that provided troops with billets, that were approved by the crown, did not have the Act applied to their province. Along with that the act had similar protective guidelines to that of the Mutiny Act in Great Britain at the time. These guidelines were punishments for people who were quartered in private buildings. They were the same whether you lived in England itself or its colonies.

This Act expired on March 24, 1776.

Understanding the Acts

The Quartering Acts have been discussed and interpreted in multiple ways throughout history. With opinions varying from claims that the acts were lawfully correct to the fact that they were tyrannical or had some underlying purpose. A large part of the difference in opinion is that the wording of discussion can be misleading. Incomplete understanding of things written in such discussions such as "'finding quarters' and "lodgment amongst the inhabitants'" lead to misunderstanding in the true intentions of the acts. The act was believed to strip people of their rights to property and privacy, when really no one actually understood the true intentions behind the legal jargon in the acts themselves. The Quartering acts never allowed for the occupation of homes without personal consent and where never used to strip the American citizens of there rights.

Quartering in times of War

During the French and Indian War Britain had forcibly seized quarters in private dwellings. In the American Revolutionary War, the New York Provincial Congress barracked Continental Army troops in private homes.

Modern relevance

• A section of the United States Declaration of Independence listing the colonies' grievances against the King explicitly notes:

He has combined with people others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us.

• The Third Amendment to the United States Constitution, expressly prohibited the military from peacetime quartering of troops without consent of the owner of the house. A product of their times, the relevance of the Acts and the Third Amendment has greatly declined since the era of the American Revolution, having been the subject of only one case in over 200 years (Engblom v. Carey).

• The Quartering Act was one of the reasons for the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, which authorized a militia. Standing armies were mistrusted, and the First Congress considered quartering of troops to have been one of the tools of oppression before and during the American revolution.

See also

• Dragonnade
• The Mutiny Acts

References

• Ammerman, David (1999). "The Tea Crisis and its Consequences, through 1775". In Greene, Jack P.; Pole, J. R. (eds.). The Blackwell Encyclopedia of the American Revolution. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell.
• Kammen, Michael (1975). Colonial New York, A History. ISBN 0-684-14325-9.
• Ketchum, Richard (2002). Divided Loyalties, How the American Revolution Came to New York. ISBN 0-8050-6120-7.
• Schecter, Barnet (2002). The Battle of New York. ISBN 0-8027-1374-2.
• Cannon, John (2009). 'Intolerable Acts', The Oxford Companion to British History. ISBN 9780199567638.
• Gerlach, Don (1966). "A Note on the Quartering Act of 1774". The New England Quarterly. 39 (1). The New England Quarterly Inc.: 80–88. Retrieved October 23, 2012.
• "Quartering Act". Retrieved November 14, 2012.

External links

• Text of the Act of 1765
• Text of the Act of 1774

Category:Laws leading to the American Revolution Category:Acts of the Parliament of Great Britain Category:1764 in law Category:Great Britain Acts of Parliament 1765 Category:Great Britain Acts of Parliament 1774 Category:1764 in the Thirteen Colonies Category:1765 in the Thirteen Colonies Category:1774 in the Thirteen Colonies