On December 1, 1834, Abraham Lincoln entered the State Capitol that stood on this site for his first term as a state representative, the first elective office he held. At that point he was not yet a national hero, but a twenty-five-year-old who had lived in Kentucky and Indiana before spending the preceding four years in Illinois and moving to New Salem three years earlier. Many historians believe his early interest in the legislature was partly because it paid better than most other pursuits available to him, and service there allowed him to reject the subsistence farming practiced by his father, Thomas Lincoln, a way of life he had detested in Kentucky and Indiana. The capitol building had formerly been the home of the State Bank and became the capitol after the original capitol in Vandalia burned in 1823; accounts indicate it was in poor condition almost from the start, with sagging floors and falling plaster. Legislative sessions were held in winter so they would not interfere with agricultural activities, which meant cold and inhospitable weather during sessions. Lincoln's first term proved a turning point in his life: he was one of fifty-five House members, thirty-six of them in their first term, and he first met his lifelong nemesis, Stephen Douglas, a first-term representative from Morgan County. Lincoln also benefited from rooming with John Stuart, leader of the Whig minority, and the politicians he met through Stuart and the experience he gained in Vandalia transformed him from an unsophisticated young man into a politician who would ultimately become one of the nation's greatest presidents.