QUARTERING ACT

QUARTERING ACT. The Quartering Act of 2 June 1774, one of the COERCION ACTS, was passed in Parliament after the BOSTON TEA PARTY in 1773. The Quartering Act provided that local authorities must provide quarters for British troops. If they failed to do so, the governor might compel the use of occupied buildings. Though two previous quartering acts had passed in the 1760s, this third act engendered greater opposition as tensions mounted between Parlaiment and Boston Whigs. The Boston patriots refused to repair the empty buildings that Gen. Thomas Gage had procured for quarters and thus forced the British troops to remain camped on the Boston Common until November 1774.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bailyn, Bernard. The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1974.

Greene, Jack P. Understanding the American Revolution: Issues and Actors. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995.

Middlekauff, Robert. The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.

John C. Miller/H. S.

See also Billeting; Revolution, American: Political History.