In the eyes of the British government Boston seemed to be a hotbed of fanaticism. On March 5, 1770, nervous British soldiers fired upon a hostile crowd and killed five civilians, resulting in what the colonists called the Boston Massacre. With nearly four thousand redcoats billeted in a town of fifteen thousand civilians, it was only a matter of time before an incident occurred. Many Bostonians became convinced that this standing army quartered among them in time of peace in violation of English law was designed to overwhelm them with military force. In 1768 royal troops were redeployed to Boston, Massachusetts, to assist with law enforcement in a colony that seethed with resentment against British authority. Tensions over the presence of British soldiers in the colonies increased. The colonies, particularly the province of New York, objected to this act, especially as it obliged them to raise money to support the soldiers without the consent of their provincial legislatures. The colonists were required to furnish provisions and necessaries for the troops, including firewood, bedding, and beer. The colonists were to provide barracks for the soldiers, and if they were not available, the troops were to be billeted in inns, stables, and alehouses if these were insufficient, the governors and councils of the provinces were authorized to use uninhabited houses, barns, and other buildings to lodge the soldiers. Since the earlier English quartering act did not extend to the colonies, Parliament in 1765 passed a Quartering Act that set down the regulations for housing soldiers in the American colonies during time of peace. Although the peace treaty of 1763 ended the war and ousted France from the North American continent, the British government believed it still needed tens of thousands of soldiers in America in order to police the newly acquired territories.
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Americans preferred to rely for their protection on local militia, not on professional soldiers. So the English fear of standing armies was inextricably connected to their fear of having soldiers quartered in their homes without their consent.ĭuring the Seven Years War between Britain and France (called in the North American colonies the French and Indian War) the colonists who had inherited the traditional English fear of standing armies resented having to billet the British redcoats.
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But as Parliament made clear in the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89, the government could not billet troops in private homes without the consent of the owners. Thus, the English concluded that if they had to have an army, it must be scattered among the populace and housed preferably in inns, alehouses, stables, and private homes. The English remained so suspicious of standing armies that they feared that concentrations of soldiers in barracks might pose military threats to the people’s liberties. At the same time as the English protested the quartering of troops in private homes, they were reluctant to house the soldiers in barracks separated from the civilian population.
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Yet the English attitude was contradictory.
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During the course of their history the English had developed a deep dislike of standing armies they especially objected to the government’s compelling them to quarter soldiers in their homes.
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When the amendment was written in the eighteenth century, Americans and Englishmen in general believed that the issue of quartering troops in private homes was of great and palpable significance. Some legal scholars have even begun to argue that the amendment might be applied to the government’s response to terror attacks and natural disasters, and to issues involving eminent domain and the militarization of the police. It suggests the individual’s right of domestic privacy-that people are protected from governmental intrusion into their homes and it is the only part of the Constitution that deals directly with the relationship between the rights of individuals and the military in both peace and war-rights that emphasize the importance of civilian control over the armed forces. Nevertheless, the amendment has some modern implications. The federal government today is not likely to ask people to house soldiers in their homes, even in time of war. The Third Amendment seems to have no direct constitutional relevance at present indeed, not only is it the least litigated amendment in the Bill of Rights, but the Supreme Court has never decided a case on the basis of it.