Lincoln and Hamlin?

[ELCore]

To follow up on my reply of a week ago... in their respective biographies, Ronald C. White (p. 634) and David Herbert Donald (p. 505) say Lincoln eschewed any role in choosing the VP nominee in 1864. Donald does mention on the next page that Andrew McClure of Pennsylvania claimed much later that Lincoln had spoken before the convention with him and others urging them to support Johnson. But the Fehrenbachers (pp. 316f) give McClure's two claimed quotations of Lincoln on the subject a D (more than average doubt about authenticity) and an E (probably not authentic), and argue at length against the idea that Lincoln's neutrality was a pretense.