Movement South and Westward Cotton, at first a small-scale crop in the South, boomed following Eli Whitney's invention in 1793 of the cotton gin, a machine that separated raw cotton from seeds and other waste. Planters in the South bought land from small farmers who frequently moved farther west. Soon, large plantations, supported by slave labor, made some families very wealthy. It wasn't just southerners who were moving west, however. Whole villages in the East sometimes uprooted and established new settlements in the more fertile farmland of the Midwest. While western settlers are often depicted as fiercely independent and strongly opposed to any kind of government control or interference, they actually received a lot of government help, directly and indirectly. Government-created national roads and waterways, such as the Cumberland Pike (1818) and the Erie Canal (1825), helped new settlers migrate west and later helped move western farm produce to market. Many Americans, both poor and rich, idealized Andrew Jackson, who became president in 1829, because he had started life in a log cabin in frontier territory. President Jackson (1829-1837) opposed the successor to Hamilton's National Bank, which he believed favored the entrenched interests of the East against the 23