Temecula Constitution Class - Amendments III through V

We meet at Faith Armory on Enterprise Circle West (next to Birth Choice) at 6:00 pm. Join us.

Here is a taste of what we will be talking about tonight:


Amendment III, No Quartering

The Founding Fathers feared a centralized government with a powerful military. One of the final straws that began the road to the American Revolution was the Quartering Act of 1765 where the colonists became required to house and feed the British troops they despised.  The Quartering Act enabled the British Empire to exercise greater control over the populace.  It was also known as one of the Intolerable Acts.

The Quartering Act was one of the reasons for the writing of the 3rd Amendment, which reads: “No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”

Tyrannical governmental systems use unwarranted influence through military means. To guard against the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power, the founder’s concerns about standing armies became evident in the 3rd Amendment.

To help the populace protect themselves, and be able to enforce the 3rd Amendment, in case the federal government violated the clause, the Founding Fathers also gave us the 2nd Amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

The concept is Militia. The suggestion is that the United States will not be one where there is a standing army. Article I, Section 8, Clause 12 gives the Congress the power to raise and support armies, but limits them to no more than two years funding.

When a military arm of a tyrannical government can compel the citizenry to house the military machinery of defense, a police state is present and liberty is at risk. Such is the thinking behind the 3rd Amendment.

Until the Revolutionary War, the American States had no military, and the militias were populated by the colonists. The Constitution gave the U.S. Government the authority to build a military for the defense of the union. A military establishment, in the minds of the Founders, was a potentially dangerous thing. The Founding Fathers desired to protect the union, but did not desire that the American military become a tool of a potentially tyrannical federal government.