Just to prove that I'm not an all-nonsense kind of guy---I present:

This Week in Senate History Jan 19, 1863

In early 1863, as the Civil War continued its bloody course, the Senate chamber served as a theater for the reading of a narrative poem inspired by that conflict. President and Mrs. Abraham Lincoln joined a large audience on the evening of January 19 to hear the celebrated actor James E. Murdoch read Francis Janvier's "Sleeping Sentinel." The poem recounted the story of Private William Scott, ordered to be shot for sleeping at his guard post in 1861. The story had acquired its dramatic element when Lincoln intervened with the pardon that spared Scott's life.