October is LGBT History Month. As part of this celebration of our heritage, honoring those who have come before and their efforts, the Gay People?s Chronicle is proud to join with dozens of other newspapers and magazines across the country in presenting a month of special features highlighting notable LGBT people throughout history.

This year, these features focus on people who have had an impact on the formation of our nation. There will be no singers, no actors, no celebrities. This year?s theme is ?We Are America,? discussing how LGBT people and their allies formed a more perfect union, a promise equality advocates strive to fulfill every day.

The American Revolution was fought, as has every war since in this nation?s history, by LGBT people among their heterosexual contemporaries. These are their stories, and their revolution continues to this day.

We start, however, with Abraham Lincoln?s predecessor in the White House, and the man who served for six weeks as vice president under Franklin Pierce.