Nearly 44 years after Jimmy Carter left the nation’s capital in humbling defeat, the 39th president returned to Washington on Tuesday for state funeral rites that featured the kind of bipartisan praise and ceremonial pomp the Georgia Democrat rarely enjoyed at his political peak.
The military honor guards, a procession down Pennsylvania Avenue and a service in the Capitol Rotunda continued public commemorations for Carter, who died Dec. 29 at age 100. Services will continue through his state funeral Thursday at the National Cathedral, before Carter returns to his hometown of Plains, Georgia, for burial beside his late wife, former first lady Rosalynn Carter, who died in 2023.
As the sun set outside the Capitol, Vice President Kamala Harris, House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune — none of whom were old enough to vote in Carter’s first national campaign — celebrated his faith, military service and devotion to service more than anything he did in politics.
“To be sure, his presidency was not without its challenges and international crises,” said Harris, for whom Carter cast his final presidential ballot this fall. But she described him nonetheless as “that all-too-rare example of a gifted man who also walks with humility, modesty and grace.”
As a presidential candidate in 1976, Harris noted, he slept in the homes of his supporters to “share a meal with them at their table and listen to what was on their minds.”
Thune, the newly elected majority leader, ticked through Carter’s legacy beyond the White House, including his hands-on contributions to rebuilding homes through Habitat For Humanity. “First and foremost a faithful servant of his creator, and his fellow man,” said Thune, a South Dakota Republican.
Johnson, a Louisiana Republican who was just four years old when Carter was inaugurated, recalled his fellow Southerner as a man “willing to roll up his own sleeves to get the work done.”
The former president was to lie in state Tuesday night and again Wednesday before his remains are moved to National Cathedral. There, President Joe Biden will eulogize Carter, his longtime ally.
Carter’s remains, which had been lying in repose at the Carter Presidential Center since Saturday, left the Atlanta campus Tuesday morning, accompanied by his children and extended family. Special Air Mission 39 departed Dobbins Air Reserve Base north of Atlanta and arrived at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland before Carter was brought to Washington.
Carter never traveled as president on the iconic blue and white Boeing 747 variant that is known as Air Force One when the sitting president is on board. It first flew as Air Force One in 1990 with President George H.W. Bush.
Many of the rituals this week are typical of what follows a president’s death — the Air Force rides to and from the Beltway, the horse-drawn caisson in the capital, the Lincoln catafalque in the rotunda.
There also is symbolism unique to Carter. As he was carried from his presidential center, a military band played the hymns “Amazing Grace” and “Blessed Assurance” for the outspoken Baptist evangelical, who called himself a born-again Christian.
Another hymn, “Just as I am, without one plea,” played as Carter was transferred from the hearse at the U.S. Navy Memorial to the horse-drawn caisson for the rest of his trip to the Capitol. The location was a nod to Carter’s place as the lone U.S. Naval Academy graduate to become commander in chief.
The path also was meant as a mirror to Carter famously getting out of his secure limousine during the 1977 inaugural parade and walking up Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House with his family.
A bipartisan delegation of members of Congress were led into the Capitol Rotunda by Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, both Democrats who represent Carter’s home state. Harris, members of President Joe Biden’s cabinet and U.S. Supreme Court justices John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh and Elena Kagan were present.
The U.S. Army Band Brass Quintet played as people awaited the casket. The room fell silent as three knocks on the rotunda door marked Carter’s arrival. The casket was placed in the middle of the room on the catafalque built in 1865 to hold assassinated President Abraham Lincoln’s casket in the same place.
The U.S. Naval Academy Glee Club performed “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” before congressional leaders and Harris, accompanied by her husband Doug Emhoff, placed wreaths beside the casket. Members of Carter’s family, including some of his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, wiped tears.
The pomp carried some irony for a politician who went from his family peanut warehouse to the Governor’s Mansion and eventually the White House. Carter won the presidency as the smiling Southerner and technocratic engineer who promised to change the ways of Washington — and eschewed many of its unwritten rules when he got there.
From 1977 to 1981, Carter was Washington’s highest-ranking resident. But he never mastered it.
“He could be prickly and a not very appealing personality” in a town that thrives on relationships, said biographer Jonathan Alter, describing a president who struggled with schmoozing lawmakers and reporters.
Carter often flouted the kind of ceremonial trappings that have been on display following his death.
While in office he wanted to keep the Marine Band from playing “Hail to the Chief,” thinking it elevated the president too much, but his advisers persuaded him to accept it as part of the job. It has played multiple times since Carter’s presidential funeral ceremonies began.
He also never used his full name, James Earl Carter Jr., even when taking the oath of office. His full name was printed on memorial cards given to mourners in Atlanta and was used again in the rotunda.
Carter once addressed the nation from the White House residence wearing a cardigan, now on display at his museum and library. His remains now rest in a wooden casket that was carried and guarded by military pallbearers in impeccable dress uniforms, similar to the attire worn by the Naval Academy midshipmen who saluted him on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Still, Carter was not met entirely with adulation Tuesday. President-elect Donald Trump, who mocked Carter during the 2024 campaign, criticized him again during a news conference in Florida for ceding control of the Panama Canal.
Pressed on whether criticism of Carter was appropriate during the solemn national rites, Trump responded, “I liked him as a man. I disagreed with his policies. He thought giving away the Panama Canal was a good thing.”
“I didn’t want to bring up the Panama Canal because of Jimmy Carter’s death,” Trump added, though he had first mentioned it unprompted.
Trump plans to attend Carter’s Washington funeral.
