Quartering Acts were laws passed by the British Parliament to require residents of its American Colonies to provide housing and certain supplies for British troops. In 1765, Parliament passed a Quartering Act among a series of measures put in place to require the American colonists to pay the costs of the British soldiers serving in the colonies. In 1774, Parliament reissued the Quartering Act. These actions angered the colonists, who considered measures authorizing the quartering of troops “intolerable.”
Background.
A treaty at the end of the French and Indian War (1754-1763) gave the British control over territory stretching from the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River. In early 1763, American colonial settlement in these lands sparked an uprising among Native American groups in the Great Lakes region and the Ohio Valley (see Pontiac’s War ). Britain was deeply in debt from years of war, and King George III feared a long and costly conflict with the Native Americans. In October, he issued a proclamation barring colonists from settling on Native American hunting lands west of the Appalachians. Parliament also voted to station a standing army in North America to defend the colonists. Many colonists ignored these limits to settlement and resented the presence of British troops enforcing the proclamation.
Parliamentary measures.
The king’s advisers thought it fair that the colonists help pay for their protection by the British Army. In March 1765, Parliament passed the Stamp Act to raise funds to support the soldiers stationed in America after 1763. The act specified that Americans must buy stamps for deeds, mortgages, law and liquor licenses, playing cards, and almanacs.
In May 1765, the British king signed the Quartering Act, which Parliament had passed to amend the Mutiny Act. The Mutiny Act, renewed annually by Parliament, set regulations for the military, provided for the funding and provisioning of troops, and set punishments for mutiny and desertion. The Quartering Act required colonial governments in America to provide the troops with shelter and certain supplies, including fuel, candles, and cider or beer. It called for the colonists to provide barracks to house patrolling soldiers. If barracks space was not sufficient, troops were to be housed in inns, taverns, barns, or uninhabited buildings. The Quartering Act also set punishments for colonists who refused to abide by the new law.
Public reaction
to the Quartering Act of 1765 was muted in comparison to what it was for the Stamp Act, which raised cries of “taxation without representation” throughout the colonies. British troops at the time were stationed mainly in a few colonies that had experienced violence along the frontier. But a number of colonists resented the presence of a standing army in peacetime, and they did not wish to pay for it. Some colonists feared that the army would be used less for protection and more for the enforcement of British policies. A large burden fell on New York, because the military headquarters for the colonies was in New York and most troops arrived and departed through its port. In 1766, the New York Provincial Assembly refused to provide funding for 1,500 troops disembarking in New York City, prompting a scolding from the British Parliament. Other colonies half-heartedly obeyed the Quartering Act, often providing fewer supplies than requested. Over the next several years, the Sons of Liberty and other protesting groups listed the quartering of troops among their chief complaints against the British government.
Later developments.
In early 1774, Parliament passed a series of laws called the Coercive Acts. The laws were intended to punish Bostonians and other colonists for the Boston Tea Party of late 1773. Colonists called these laws the Intolerable Acts . Among these acts was an updated Quartering Act. The Quartering Act of 1774 made colonial authorities responsible for lodging British troops. If a colonial assembly did not fulfill the demand for housing and supplies quickly enough, the new law allowed the governor to bypass the assembly and order when and how to quarter the troops. Such laws became an important force in uniting Britain’s 13 American Colonies against British rule.
The American colonists won the right to self-government by defeating Britain in the American Revolution (1775-1783). In 1776, the Declaration of Independence listed the quartering of troops as one of the main grievances against the British rulers. In 1788, at the Virginia convention for ratifying the Constitution of the United States, the statesman Patrick Henry called the quartering of troops “one of our first complaints.” Accordingly, the Third Amendment , added to the Constitution in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights, bars the government from forcibly occupying private homes for military purposes in peacetime.
