In August, 1913, President Woodrow Wilson made one of his numerous attempts to remold Mexico in the image of the United States by sending a special executive agent, John Lind, to hasten the political demise of Provisional President Victoriano Huerta. Having refused Huerta diplomatic recognition because he achieved power by military coup d'etat, Wilson instructed Lind to insist that Huerta arrange an armistice with the Constitutionalists, the revolutionaries who had risen in rebellion rather than accept the usurper's rule. Free elections, in which Huerta was not to be a candidate for President, were to follow the armistice. Following his Anglo-Saxon instincts, Wilson assumed that, if all parties abided by the results of the elections, a constitutionally legitimate government would be installed and the source of Mexico's revolutionary strife would thereby be eliminated.