The majority of the letters included in Part I were published in Alexis de Tocqueville's Œuvres Complètes, VII. Correspondance étrangère d'Alexis de Tocqueville. Amérique. Europe continentale, eds. François Mélonio, Lisa Queffélec, and Anthony Pleasance (Paris: Gallimard, 1986). There are three new letters of Tocqueville (included in this section) which were not published in OC, VII. These letters were sent by Tocqueville to: Theodore Sedgwick (May 1853, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University), Richard Rush (June or July 1849, Firestone Library, Princeton University), and Jared Sparks (December 11, 1852, Houghton Library, Harvard University). The latter was discovered by Robert T. Gannett whose own translation (slightly different from the one included here) was originally published in the Harvard Library Bulletin, New Series, 14: 3 (2003): 10.

The majority of the letters received by Tocqueville from his American correspondents from 1840 to 1859 have never appeared in print before. They were collected by the editors of the present volume from various libraries in the United States: the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (Yale University); the Firestone Library (Princeton University, Rush Family Papers, C0079, IV. Papers, Documents, and Correspondence, 1846–1849, relating to the French Mission); the Houghton Library (Harvard University); the Huntington Library (San Marino, California); the University of South Carolina Library (Columbia, S.C.); the Massachusetts Historical Society Library (Boston). Some of the letters included in Part I are available only as “Bonnel copies” at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.