Reggie Bartlett

Reginald Bartlett was a citizen of the Confederate States of America. He served in the Great War, which profoundly changed his views on race in the C.S. After the war, he actively opposed the rising Freedom Party and Jake Featherston, at the cost of his own life.

Bartlett was a pharmacist's assistant in Richmond during peacetime. Like most able-bodied young men in the Confederate States, Bartlett had been a conscript. In the tense days after Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, Bartlett attended a speech given by President Woodrow Wilson, which reaffirmed the Confederacy's committment to the Entente and declared war on the [[United States (Southern Victory).  Stirred by the ideals of democracy Wilson professed, Bartlett enlisted immediately, rather than wait for his regiment to be called up.

Bartlett saw his first action as a soldier on the Roanoke front outside Big Lick, Virginia. His initial patriotism was worn away quickly by the horrors of trench warfare. He captured by Chester Martin's unit, and sent to a POW camp in West Virginia. Here he began maturing demonstrably, expressing appreciation for Martin and the way he treated Bartlett. It was also while he was imprisoned that Confederate ally France was defeated by Germany at the Battle of Verdun.

Naval officer Ralph Briggs took Bartlett into his confidence, and eventually, both escaped. Upon returning to the C.S. lines, Bartlett was assigned to Sequoyah. He was captured a second time after being injured in battle. Not in any shape to escape, he is placed in a U.S. veterans' hospital in St. Louis until the post-armistice exchange. While in the hospital, Bartlett interacted with black C.S. POWs. Impressed with these men, Bartlett began to reconsider his ingrained fews on race in the Confederacy.

After the war, Bartlett, formerly a staunch Whig, became a Radical Liberal. As Jake Featherston and the Freedom Party grew in popularity, Bartlett actively sough to oppose it. He supported naval officer Tom Brearley's denunciation of Roger Kimball's sinking of the USS Ericsson. When Brearley was murdered, Bartlett remained uncowed. Even after the Hampton Affair temporarily halted the Freedom Party's momentum, Bartlett continued to fight the Party's stalwarts. During one such episode, Bartlett was ambushed and shot to death.