“A code, or not a code—that is the question!”. Many countries asked themselves that very question. In the United-States that question was asked during the American codification movement, and answered, in chronological, with the civil codes of Louisiana from 1808, 1825; the Code of Georgia from 1862; the Revised Civil Code of Louisiana of 1870, the Civil Code of California of 1872, the Civil Code of Dakota Territory of 1872, the Revised Code of North Dakota of 1895, the Civil Code of Montana of 1895, and the Revised Code of South Dakota of 1903. One other civil code in is the Field Civil Code, also called the 1860 Project of Civil Code for the state of New York. Even though it was never adopted, it had a huge impact on the following civil code. What is very peculiar about all the American civil codes is that they all come from a different background and culture, each one has its own history. This is a legal history work in a comparative perspective, it is a study of the translation and acculturation of a legal concept the civil code in a common-law country. The codes history is first examined state by state in a chronological order, to gives the main information about the state, their law and how they undertake the codification process. Then they are looked through the factors and reasons driving them. The primary idea was to find among all those states a common reason that drove them to codification, the reality was however a bit more entangled. Finally, it is a comparative study of the inside of the code in order to see if the content of the code is similar, whereas it is a question of source of the codes, shape or legal institutions