For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:


When the Second Continental Congress wrote that,

He [King George III] has combined with 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:[1]


they were charging George III with quartering (housing) English troops within the towns and cities of the America Colonies against the wishes of colonists. In particular, colonists objected to England’s Parliament passing two Quartering acts, one in 1765 and one in 1774. The Congress opposed the housing of troops in privately owned buildings and also felt that Parliament had no right to pass laws on the behalf of the colonies.
There were two Quartering acts passed by the English parliament – one in 1765 and one in 1774. The 1774 Quartering act came to be identified by colonists as one of the four "Intolerable Acts." The 1665 Quartering act was instituted during the French-Indian War and required colonies to provide adequate housing for British soldiers, however the act was not respected by all colonial legislatures and trade restrictions were imposed on New York for refusing to comply with requests for quartering.[2]
A second quartering act was passed in 1774. The Quartering act of 1774

"allowed officers to refuse unsuitable housing and to demand a more convenient location. In the event that local authorities did not satisfy such a request within twenty four hours, the act empowered the governor to order ay uninhabited buildings prepared for the use of the king’s troops. The act did not, as has often been asserted, provide for the billeting soldiers in private homes.”[3]

The effects of the act on the colonies are a point of disagreement among historians there is little doubt that colonists objected to the quartering of troops in the colonies. Don R. Gerlach argued that many historians overstate the effects that the Quartering Act of 1774 had on the colonies. Through a close reading of the act itself, Gerlach points out that the governor could only order the billeting of troops in uninhabited outhouses, barns and other buildings, not in the occupied private homes of colonists.[4] Gerlach paid close attention to the exact wording of the Quartering Act of 1774 but did not discuss the way that it was experienced by colonists. However, he did look at the official response of the First Continental Congress. The Congress, he argued, did not specifically claim that any troops entered private homes in its “Declaration and Resolves”, but instead referred only to the act in its legal name. He then argued that “The Declaration of Independence simply mentions the objection to standing armies in peacetime without consent of local legislatures – a safeguard generalization which adequately covered the real objection and the unwillingness to accept Parliament’s authorization of such armies.”[5] The first claim made by Gerlach seems fair; however the claim that the Declaration of Independence does not include a direct reference to the quartering of troops is clearly incorrect, as shown by the inclusion of the charge that George III mistreats the colonists by “quartering large bodies of armed troops among” them.[6]
While Gerlach argued that the Quartering Act of 1774 was not a major concern for the colonists, he fails to address the fact that even if colonists were not specifically opposed to the Quartering Act of 1774, they were opposed to the quartering of British troops among them. In December 1756, the middle of the French-India War, English officials came into conflict with colonial officials in both New York and Pennsylvania over the quartering of troops.[7] By the time the second continental congress had met, colonists objected both to having soldiers living amongst them, and to the attempts of Parliament to make and enforce laws upon the colonies.

Works Cited
Declaration of Independence”, Archiving Early America, .
David Ammerman, In The Common Cause, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia,
1974.
Don R. Gerlach, “A Note on the Quartering Act of 1774,” The New England Quarterly,
Vol. 39, No. 1 (1966), 80-88.
Rogers, Alan J., “Colonial Opposition to the Quartering of Troops During the French and
Indian War,” Military Affairs, Vol 34, No. 1 (1970), 7-11.
[1] Declaration of Independence”, Archiving Early America, <>.
[2] J. Alan Rogers, “Colonial Opposition to the Quartering of Troops During the French and Indian War,” Military Affairs, Vol. 34, No. 1(1970), 7-9.
[3]David Ammerman, In The Common Cause, (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1974), 10.
[4] Don R. Gerlach, “A Note on the Quartering Act of 1774,” The New England Quarterly, Vol. 39, No. 1 (1966), 83.
[5] Ibid., 87.
[6] “Declaration of Independence.”
[7] Rogers, “Colonial Opposition”, 7-8.


Chris Parsons