If you give politicians an inch, they’ll take a mile. John Dickinson was one of the leading writers in the early days of the conflict. He insisted that the colonists needed to “oppose a disease at its beginning,” before the sickness could spread. Writing under the penname “A Farmer in Pennsylvania,” Dickinson published a series of essays now known as  Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania in a Philadelphia newspaper. Dickinson used his pen to vigorously oppose the Declaratory and Townshend Acts. The American colonist had effectively nullified the hated Stamp Act by refusing to enforce it and...