  This paper investigates the impact of Reconstruction-era amnesty policy on
the officeholding and wealth of planter elites in the postbellum U.S. South.
Amnesty policy restricted the political and economic rights of the planter
class for nearly three years during Reconstruction. The paper estimates the
effects of being excepted from amnesty on elites' future wealth and political
power using a regression discontinuity design. Results on a sample of delegates
to Reconstruction conventions show that exclusion from amnesty substantially
decreases the likelihood of holding political office. I find no evidence that
exclusion from amnesty impacted later census wealth for Reconstruction
delegates or for a larger sample of known slaveholders who lived in the South
in 1860. These findings are in line with previous studies evidencing changes to
the identity of the political elite and continuity of economic mobility for the
planter elite across the Civil War and Reconstruction.
