The relocation allowed a supportive uncle to provide guidance to James — who was enrolled into the Riverside Military Academy — where he stayed until the completion of 10th grade.

[2] Biographer Grant Hayter-Menzies speculated that the sudden death of his father left James with an approach to life that was both conservative and cautious.

[7] Because the Armistice had occurred earlier in the month, the Army was being reduced in size, so Carter received his commission as a second lieutenant in the Georgia National Guard.

Now, as the owner of a small business, he undertook the routine of working from "sunrise until dark", "Monday morning until Saturday afternoon", before a single evening of partying.

[3] According to his son Jimmy, Carter was engaged to another woman at the time of first meeting Lillian and had already planned out the wedding before boarding a train and disappearing for three months.

[3][13] Carter's reading habits consisted of daily and weekly newspapers, farm journals, Richard Halliburton's The Royal Road to Romance, Arthur Conan Doyle stories of Sherlock Holmes, and the complete set of Tarzan tales by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

[13] Biographer Beverly Gherman wrote that Carter differed from his wife and children in not having a "love of books" but instead turning to newspapers for reading material.

[20] According to his eldest son, despite his disillusion with Roosevelt, Carter never abandoned the statewide Democratic Party and voted for its candidates in the remaining elections held during his lifetime.

For the 1936 Republican National Convention, Carter assembled his family to huddle around a radio for several hours, and subsequently voted for the party's nominee, Alf Landon, in the general election.

Carter's elder son remembered that he "would take his one-ton farm truck to Gene Talmadge's rallies and barbecues, its flat bed covered with straw and loaded down with our neighbors".