It was a warrior's dangerous bargain: denied their whisky ration for misconduct on the march and ordered to take the lower bridge across Antietam Creek after other units had been stalled by heavy enemy fire, one of the 51st Pennsylvania piped up, "Will you give us our whisky, Colonel, if we take it?" Assured by their colonel that they would, the regiment stormed the bridge and established a Union foothold on that end of the battlefield of Antietam, September 17, 1862.