He brought together opponents of Mexico's democratically-elected President Francisco I. Madero in the Pact of the Embassy, colluding with them to stage a coup d'etat in February 1913.

Francisco I. Madero, the scion of a rich, landowning family in northern Mexico, brought together a broad coalition of Mexicans opposed to Díaz.

When Díaz was forced to resign in 1911, his Mexican political supporters and the foreign powers and businesses that had benefited from his policies regarding investments saw that the new president was unable to effectively lead.

Wilson was "a natural ally of reactionary elements including U.S. and Mexican business interests, the Catholic Church, and eventually high-ranking members of the federal army".

[12] Wilson was a master manipulator of information and disinformation, which helped amplify the Mexican public's and foreign powers' perceptions that Madero was a naïve bungler, opposed to the interests of the U.S.

Although the Pact of the Embassy was to have a power-sharing arrangement between the leaders of the Mexican coup and the U.S., Huerta seized power once events were underway.

[16][17][18] After the inauguration of President Woodrow Wilson on March 4, 1913, he was informed of events in Mexico by a special agent, William Bayard Hale.

[20] The President sought information independent of that provided by Henry Lane Wilson by sending John Lind, the former governor of Minnesota, to Mexico as his personal envoy.

He came into power as an apostle of liberty but he was simply a man of disoriented intellect who happened to be in the public eye at the psychological moment.

the responsibilities of office and the disappointments growing out of rivalries and intrigues shattered his reason completely, and in the last days of his government, during the bombardment of the capital, his mental qualities always abnormal, developed into a homicidal, dangerous form of lunacy....[22]During World War I, Wilson served on the Commission for Relief in Belgium and, in 1915, accepted the chairmanship of the Indiana State Chapter of the League to Enforce Peace, a position he held until his resignation over U.S. involvement in the League of Nations after the close of the war.