The Flick Amendment was an 1871 Republican-initiated

amendment An amendment is a formal or official change made to a law, contract, constitution, or other legal document. It is based on the verb to amend, which means to change for better. Amendments can add, remove, or update parts of these agreements. They ...

to the West Virginia State Constitution that restored state rights to former Confederates and African-Americans who had been barred from voting and holding office in West Virginia following the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...

. In the years following the Civil War, the

West Virginia legislature The West Virginia Legislature is the state legislature of the U.S. state of West Virginia. A bicameral legislative body, the legislature is split between the upper Senate and the lower House of Delegates. It was established under Article VI ...

was dominated by the

Radical Republicans The Radical Republicans were a political faction within the Republican Party originating from the party's founding in 1854—some six years before the Civil War—until the Compromise of 1877, which effectively ended Reconstruction. They ca ...

. By 1869, Liberal Republicans were being elected to the legislature in significant numbers. The amendment, named for William H.H. Flick, a newly elected Liberal Republican, was intended to limit the growth of the Democratic Party in the legislature by appealing to African-Americans and conservative-leaning Democrats. The amendment, however, had unintentional consequences for the Republican party. The

Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution The Fifteenth Amendment (Amendment XV) to the United States Constitution prohibits the federal government and each state from denying or abridging a citizen's right to vote "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." It wa ...

, which granted in 1870 the right to vote regardless of skin color, had been ratified more quickly than proponents of the Flick Amendment had anticipated, nullifying its appeal to African-Americans. The provisions of the Flick Amendment were incorporated into the West Virginia Constitution of 1872. Republicans had hoped the amendment would unite the Republicans and fragment the Democratic party. The opposite occurred, however, and the newly enfranchised Democratic Party—propelled by reinstated ex-Confederate voters, dominated state politics for the next quarter-century.

References

{{reflist * Ambler, Charles H. & Festus P. Summers. West Virginia: The Mountain State. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1958. *Rice, Otis K. & Stephen W. Brown. West Virginia: A History. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993. *Callahan, James M. Semi- Centennial History of West Virginia. Charleston: Semi-Centennial Commission, 1913. Legal history of West Virginia