After John Frémont's defeat in the 1856 presidential election, Medill began planning for the 1860 election. In an interview published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1899, Medill recalled that the strategy to secure the 1860 Republican presidential nomination for Abraham Lincoln was devised in the Tribune's offices in the summer of 1859. In December 1859, the strategy was put into action when Medill went to Washington, D.C., as the Tribune's correspondent. Once there, Medill promoted Lincoln's candidacy and boosted Chicago as the site of the 1860 Republican National Convention.