John Adams

John Adams was a man of fierce conviction and hidden depths, the second president of the United States and one of the most principled of its Founding Fathers. His Sun in Scorpio shone through transformation, the Eagle at the core, power exercised through the mind rather than the fist; he could read people, see trouble coming from miles off, and hold to a hard truth when it cost him dearly. Set in the twelfth house, that Sun burned in the unknowable realm of conscience and self-sacrifice, the "Jesus House" where one risks being crucified for another's cause. Fittingly, he defied the fury of his own townsfolk to defend the British soldiers of the Boston Massacre, insisting on the right to counsel when it was ruinous to do so. His Moon in Aries, in the fifth house of creation, gave a masculine, Martian psyche that found peace only through action and independence, the driven doer whose great creation was a young republic. He helped Jefferson draft the Declaration of Independence and championed it in Congress, authored the Massachusetts Constitution, and served as the nation's first vice president. His Scorpio Ascendant lent the all-or-nothing survivor's mask: impossible to fool, uncompromising, and, notably, never a slaveholder. He and Jefferson both died on the fiftieth Fourth of July.