It won the distinguished John Addison Porter Prize from the university for best work of scholarship that year.

[1] As an assistant professor in the Department of History in 1938,[10] Pierson translated and quoted from several of the letters in a book he wrote about Tocqueville in America; but he viewed them as primary source documents rather than as an epistolary accomplishment.

[11] The value of this early scholarship assumed greater importance as general public interest in Tocqueville's writing has evolved.

[1] Pierson was a strong opponent to Yale's initial attempt at some form of coordinate or co-education with Vassar College.

In a statement made to the "Vassar Miscellany News", Pierson said women "have never been celebrated in any work I know for their originality, their Imagination, their rebelliousness or constructiveness of thought.