"You must not lay much stress on the blunder about Mr. Adams," Lincoln writes James O. Putnam, "for I made a more mischievous one, in the first printed speech of mine, on the Slavery question—Oct. 1854—I stated that the prohibition of slavery in the North West Territory was made a condition in the Virginia deed of cession—while, in fact, it was not." He also writes James F. Babcock of New York about pictures and Volk's bust. Abraham Lincoln to James O. Putnam, 13 September 1860, CW, 4:115; Abraham Lincoln to James F. Babcock, 13 September 1860, CW, 4:114-15.