Jimmy Carter was to be honoured on Thursday with a state funeral at Washington's National Cathedral, amid a groundswell of tributes celebrating the 39th U.S. president and the last from the so-called Greatest Generation.
The service caps a week of mourning, with Americans quietly filing past the flag-draped coffin in the U.S. Capitol to pay their respects to Carter, who died on December 29 at the age of 100 in his home state of Georgia.
President Joe Biden will deliver the eulogy for his fellow Democrat at the Episcopal church, a traditional venue for U.S. presidential send-offs, including those of Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush.
Biden revealed in an interview with USA Today published Wednesday that Carter had asked him to do the honours when the two longstanding friends met for the last time four years ago.
"Carter was a decent man. I think Carter looked at the world not from here but from here, where everybody else lives," Biden said, gesturing from above his head towards his heart.
Biden's living predecessors Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump are expected to join around 3,000 mourners at the service. Thursday has been designated a national day of mourning, with federal offices closed.
Carter, who served a single term before suffering a crushing election loss to Ronald Reagan in 1980, was once perceived as naive and weak in the dog-eat-dog world of Washington politics.
A more nuanced image of him has emerged as the years passed, reassessing achievements like brokering a peace deal between Israel and Egypt.
He also received high praise for his post-presidential humanitarian efforts, earning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
The first president to reach triple digits, Carter had been in hospice care since February 2023 in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, where he died and will be buried next to his late wife, former first lady Rosalynn Carter.
Mourners began paying their respects on Saturday, as the carefully choreographed six-day farewell commenced with U.S. flags flying at half-staff across the country.
A black hearse bearing Carter's remains paused at his boyhood family peanut farm in Plains, where a bell was rung 39 times, and staff stood in silent tribute.
Crowds gathered along the roadside to bid their farewells, snap photographs, or salute as the motorcade slowly rolled past.
Carter's flag-draped casket arrived at Washington's snow-covered U.S. Capitol on Tuesday atop a gun carriage. It was accompanied by hundreds of service members, with military pallbearers carrying Carter to the Rotunda to lie in state ahead of Thursday's ceremony the first presidential funeral since George H.W. Bush died in 2018.
Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the Senate, described Carter as "one of the most decent and humble public servants we have ever seen."
"President Carter was a living embodiment of leadership through service, compassion, and a thirst for justice for all," he said.