Lind also played an important role in the Mexican Revolution as an envoy for President Woodrow Wilson.

Party loyalty brought the usual rewards: a receivership in the United States Land Office in 1881, and 1886 a Republican nomination to Congress.

[2] Lind was so devoted to his law practice that in the very convention that first nominated him to Congress, he left before proceedings had closed to attend to a client in the court down at Lincoln County.

His support for placing lumber on the duty-free list was far more popular within his district than in the lumber-producing regions in the north of the state.

As a member of the House Commerce Committee, he handled all the bills dealing with bridge construction in the Northwest and stood fast against monopoly privileges.

Lind offered an anti-trust bill of his own, forbidding railroads from carrying any of the so-called patent cars—those like the oil-cars that Standard Oil built, or the refrigerator cars that the meat-packers designed—that could not be furnished to all shippers at equal and fair rates.

[4] In 1890, when the Farmers' Alliances were defeating other Minnesota Republican congressmen, Lind survived re-election challenges.

His law practice had been neglected, and, with no independent means, he found it better to announce his retirement at the end of the Fifty-Second Congress.

Lind "threatened a military intervention by the United States in case the demands were rejected," but promised an American loan to Mexico if Huerta stepped aside.

According to an article on the front page of the Moose Lake (Minnesota) Star on January 17, 1901: "Ex-governor John Lind after having freed himself from the duties of the governor last Thursday walked down to the Dispatch office in St. Paul and administered to Editor Black a well-deserved licking.