Quartering Act

The Quartering Act refers to two separate incarnations of a law passed by the British Parliament in the 1760s and 1770s. The Quartering Act of 1765 required Great Britain's North American colonies to provide housing, food, and other supplies for British soldiers stationed in the colonies. American colonists disliked the law and discovered ways to avoid complying with it.

In 1774, however, as punishment for the Boston Tea Party, the British Parliament passed a new Quartering Act as part of a collection of new laws known by Americans as the Intolerable Acts. The Quartering Act of 1774 forced American colonists to board British soldiers in their privately owned homes and other buildings. The Intolerable Acts, including the 1774 Quartering Act, infuriated the colonists and were instrumental in encouraging Americans to seek independence from Britain in the American Revolution (1775–1783). By the end of the war, the United States had won its freedom and became an independent nation.

Background

The original Quartering Act, passed by the British Parliament in 1765, was an effort by Great Britain to raise money from its thirteen colonies in North America. In the late 1750s and early 1760s, Britain had fought the French and Indian War (1754–1763) in the colonies with its enemy, France. The conflict arose out of British-French territorial disputes in North America. The war ended with British victory in 1763.

The French and Indian War had been particularly costly for Britain. It not only left the country with substantial debt, but it also forced Britain to station troops in the colonies indefinitely as a safeguard against more French encroachment into British territories. British leaders viewed the costs of paying the war debt and leaving troops in the colonies as a concern of both Britain and America. The British government reasoned that the American colonies should help pay the costs of their own protection by British troops.

The British Parliament passed the Quartering Act in 1765 as a cost-saving measure that would help Britain pay its debts. The act mandated that each American colony would provide housing and supplies to any British soldiers stationed within its boundaries. This housing was to take the form of standard military barracks, but if the barracks were too small or if none were available, the British soldiers were to be housed in local inns, stables, taverns, and restaurants. If no room was available in these establishments, the soldiers would be quartered in abandoned houses, barns, or other available public locations. If no quarters were available at all for British troops in a certain area, the soldiers simply camped outside, as in the case of a British regiment in Boston that was forced to sleep in tents in Boston Common, a public park.

The Quartering Act did not generate much public protest among Americans. This was because British soldiers were not stationed in every colony and because colonial governments found ways to avoid having to house British soldiers anywhere at all. However, the colonists still opposed the Quartering Act in principle. They viewed the presence of the British army in their colonies as unnecessary in a time of peace, and they resented that they had to pay the taxes that funded the soldiers' housing. Still, Americans endured the 1765 Quartering Act into the mid-1770s, when developing events in the colonies forced Britain to expand the provisions of the law.

Overview

Relations between Great Britain and its American colonies worsened into the early 1770s. This was largely due to increasing numbers of British taxes on the colonies that Americans considered overbearing and unfair. The colonists were particularly outraged by the Tea Act of 1773. This law forced the colonies to buy only the tea sold by Britain's East India Company, which was financially struggling at the time. British tea ships arrived in Boston, Massachusetts, in November of 1773, and the British-controlled colonial government accepted it into Boston Harbor. In mid-December, a group of Patriots, or members of the American independence movement, disguised themselves as Native Americans, boarded the ships in secret, and dumped nearly 350 chests of British tea into the harbor to protest the Tea Act.

The Boston Tea Party enraged British government leaders. In response, the British Parliament passed a series of new laws designed to punish both the Massachusetts colony specifically and the other twelve colonies generally. Americans referred to these laws as the Intolerable Acts.

One of the laws included in the acts was an expansion of the 1765 Quartering Act. The Quartering Act of 1774 allowed British officers to choose any location they wished for the boarding of their soldiers, even privately owned American homes and buildings. The practical benefit of this to the British military was to be able to house soldiers near the areas where they were assigned to work, instead of in remote locations.

Some twenty-first-century historical sources claim the 1774 Quartering Act allowed British troops to force themselves into colonists' homes and demand immediate lodging. Other sources assert only that the act permitted British soldiers to be housed in private buildings, without specifying whether these homes were occupied. In any case, the Intolerable Acts infuriated the citizens of Massachusetts, who claimed the laws infringed upon their personal liberties.

The British Parliament had intended the Intolerable Acts to demoralize the American people, specifically those in Massachusetts, so they would stop resisting British authority. Instead, the laws united Americans in opposing British rule. The other twelve American colonies began sending goods to Boston in response to the city's harbor being closed by one of the Intolerable Acts. The colonies also established congresses where representatives discussed the issue of declaring independence from Britain.

This growing American resentment resulted in the meeting of the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia in September of 1774. It was here that the colonies formally addressed their complaints with the British government. Britain, however, refused to modify its governing tactics, and in the spring of 1775, the thirteen American colonies went to war with Britain in the American Revolution. The United States declared itself an independent nation in 1776.

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