John Dickinson won distinction in 1767-68 chiefly by a series of twelve letters written in response to several acts of the British Ministry and Parliament that he argued violated the rights of American colonists. These "Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies" were immediately published in Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Williamsburg, London, and Paris. Not until Thomas Paine's Common Sense appeared in 1776 was any product of an American pen so acclaimed--on both sides of the Atlantic--as the "Farmer's Letters." Dickinson was a representative of Pennsylvania at the Stamp Act Congress in 1765, and was chief author of the "Declarations of Rights and Grievances" and the petition to King George III approved by that Congress. He was a member of the First Continental Congress and had a hand in drafting the official proclamations of that assembly, including the "Declarations and Resolves," whose list of grievances would be echoed in the Declaration of Independence. In the Second Continental Congress, Dickinson authored the famous "olive branch petition" to the king and, with Thomas Jefferson, the "Declaration on the Causes and Necessity of Taking up Arms." Dickinson wrote the original draft of the Articles of Confederation, submitted to Congress on July 12, 1776. Though he supported its principles, Dickinson opposed issuing the Declaration of Independence on prudential grounds.