Francis Scott Key

Francis Scott Key is remembered chiefly for a single dawn. Watching the British bombard Fort McHenry in 1814, he saw the American flag still flying at first light and set down the poem "Defence of Fort M'Henry", which, wedded to a popular tune, became "The Star-Spangled Banner" and, a century on, the national anthem. By trade he was a Maryland and Washington lawyer of four decades who argued often before the Supreme Court and served as District Attorney under Andrew Jackson. His Sun sits in Leo in the seventh house, the lion-king who shines through others and through the public stage; the born performer whose golden verse became a nation's voice, radiant in the house of unification. His Moon in Aries in the second is the martial, driven heart, finding footing through action and fierce conviction. Aquarius rises, the mask of the individualist who beats his own drum. Yet the chart is only temperament, and it excuses nothing. Key owned enslaved people, prosecuted abolitionists as District Attorney, and held eight human beings at his death. That his lyric praised the "land of the free" while he denied others' freedom is the plain and unresolved contradiction of the man.