Andrew C. Nahne
Both Dr. Castel and Dr. Nahm are members of the history department of Western Michigan University at Kalamazoo. This is Dr. Castel’s third appearance in AMERICAN HERITAGE ; a Kansan, he was formerly a Civil War specialist but has recently widened his field of study. Dr. Nahm was born in Pyongyang, Korea (where, incidentally, the General Sherman was destroyed), and has written many articles and monographs on the history of his native country.
Major sources for this article include Corea, The Hermit Nation , by William Elliott Griffis (Scribner, 1904); Homer B. Hulbert’s History of Korea, Volume II, revised by Clarence Norwood Weems (Hillary, 1962); and Americans in Eastern Asia , by Tyler Dennett (Barnes & Noble, 1963). Captain Tilton’s letters to his wife are to be found in “Marine Amphibious Landing in Korea, 1871,” a pamphlet compiled by the Marine Corps’s Historical Branch and published in 1966 by the Naval Historical Foundation in Washington.
Articles by this Contributor
April 1968
Our first Korean war, in 1871, was fought to open the Hermit Kingdom to Western trade. But the hermits wanted very much to be left alone

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Why do we need a national nonprofit membership society for American history?
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“Save America’s Treasures” has been totally eliminated—the largest Federal program supporting preservation of such treasures as the original Star Spangled Banner and George Washington’s tent.
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65% of Americans don’t know what happened at the Constitutional Convention, according to a recent survey by Newsweek.
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The “Teaching American History” grants—the largest Federal program supporting history education—have been completely eliminated.
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Visits to the Top 20 Civil War battlefields have dropped in half from 1970 to 2009 according to official National Park Service statistics.
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40% of Americans can’t identify whom we fought in World War II, according to a recent survey by Newsweek.
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A quarter of Americans believe Congress shares power over U.S. foreign policy with the United Nations, according to a recent Annenberg survey.
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“There is little that is more important for an American citizen to know than the history and traditions of his country,” John F. Kennedy wrote in American Heritage.
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The “We the People Program,” which touched some 30 million students and 90,000 teachers over 25 years, has been completely eliminated.
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Two-thirds of Americans could not correctly name Yorktown as the last major military action of the American Revolution, according to a recent national Gallup survey.
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The National Heritage Areas and Scenic Byways program, the only major Federal program encouraging visits to historic places, has been completely eliminated in Congressional committee.




