  This paper investigates the impact of Reconstruction-era amnesty policy on
the officeholding and wealth of elites in the postbellum South. Amnesty policy
restricted the political and economic rights of Southern elites for nearly
three years during Reconstruction. I estimate the effect of being excluded from
amnesty on elites' future wealth and political power using a regression
discontinuity design that compares individuals just above and below a wealth
threshold that determined exclusion from amnesty. Results on a sample of
Reconstruction convention delegates show that exclusion from amnesty
significantly decreased the likelihood of ex-post officeholding. I find no
evidence that exclusion 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 both
changes to the identity of the political elite, and the continuity of economic
mobility among the planter elite across the Civil War and Reconstruction.
