In 1861, the American Civil War broke out and 16-year old was allowed by his father to enter the Union Army.

He returned to Durham after his term of enlistment ended and pressed and harvested hay and worked on bridge and dam construction projects to earn money for college.

After graduating from Dartmouth, Bartlett taught at Salmon Falls High School in order to earn money for his legal studies.

Although there were numerous eyewitnesses who identified Tow Kang, a member of the rival On Leong Chinese Merchants Association, as the shooter, Chin and Chung were found guilty.

In 1907, Bartlett and Harvey H. Pratt defended nine alleged Hip Sing members accused of committing murders in retaliation for Wong Yak Chung's slaying as well as well-known Boston businessman and Hip Sing leader Warry Charles, who was indicted for being an accessory before the fact.

Bartlett and Pratt appealed the case to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on the grounds that a should have been allowed to testify that a police officer and a Chinese interpreter had conspired to bribe prosecution witnesses.

Pratt and Bartlett petitioned for commutation for the other two defendants, Warry Charles and Joe Guey and sixteen days before their scheduled executions, Governor Eben Sumner Draper announced that he had accepted the Massachusetts Governor's Council's recommendation to commute Charles and Guey's death sentences to life imprisonment.

[8] On October 18, the Massachusetts Ballot Law Commission ruled that Whitney was the Democratic nominee.

[10] Bartlett finished fourth in the general election, receiving 3% of the vote to Guild's 50%, Whitney's 23%, and the Independence League's Thomas Hisgen's 20%.