It seemed more important in the 18th Century.
Published January 5th, 2007 by bmagnus in Random Thoughts

Some time ago I wrote about the First Amendment and the Second Amendment to the Constitution. The third installment of my impromptu series on the Bill of Rights has been slowed by the fact that nobody knows what it says. This isn’t one of those Amendments that comes up in Supreme Court cases all the time; it’s not one the ACLU or the NRA has to rant about. In fact, this Amendment has worked so well I can’t imagine anyone wanting to violate it.

If you’d like the context, the whole Bill of Rights is right here, but the part we need says:



Remember, this was important enough to guys like Jefferson and Madison that they stuck it right in there between the right to bear arms and the right to be secure in your own home. As the title says, it was a bigger deal back then. Quartering of British troops in private homes was a big issue prior to and during the American Revolution, a British tradition of necessity, and in fact one of the grievances mentioned in the Declaration of Independence.

It worked like this: Farmer Jones would open his door one day to find a British Officer informing him that two dozen men would be staying on his property for an indefinate period of time. Farmer Jones would be expected to make accommodations, feed them all their meals, and maybe even see to their laundry and entertainment until such time as the soldiers moved on. Woe be to Farmer Jones if he did not see to his guests properly, and woe to Farmer Jones’s daughters in any event (if Farmer or Mrs. Jones were clever and had any sort of warning, the girls might be sent away into the woods to fend for themselves — for their own protection).

This was a big enough and bad enough problem that it was worth writing not just a law, but a Constitutional guaranty that it would never happen in peacetime, and during war would require a special act of Congress.