Why did slave rebellions and the fear of slave revolts consume the att

Why did slave rebellions and the fear of slave revolts consume the attention of white colonists in the South and the North in the 1730s and the 1740s?

How did white colonists and their governments respond to these actual and feared slave rebellions?

ANSWER
Answer: An ideal answer will:
1. Discuss increasing numbers of colonists, particularly in the Chesapeake and the Carolinas, but also in northern states such as New York and Rhode Island, a center for the slave trade, depended on slave labor and the slave trade for their economic prosperity and livelihood.
2. Discuss how the promise of freedom for runaway slaves in the southern colonies offered by the government authorities in Spanish Florida helped prompt slave rebellions and revolts in the South.
3. Discuss how the bloody killings and partial success of the Stono Rebellion in South Carolina in 1739 prompted the development of widespread fears of slave revolts in southern and northern colonies.
4. Discuss how the violent and bloody suppression of the Stono Rebellion by the South Carolina militia led other white planters to believe that this armed, punitive response should be the model of how to handle other slave rebellions.
5. Note how the white planter government of South Carolina restricted temporarily the importation of more African slaves and permanently curtailed the rights of slaves to assemble with one another in the aftermath of the Stono Rebellion.
6. Discuss how the popular fears of slave rebellions and revolts extended even to northern colonies in New York and Rhode Island where slavery also played significant economic functions and slaves were subject to harsh treatment and possible sale to southern plantation owners.
7. Discuss the particular events (e.g., a series of unexplained fires in New York) and popular hysteria leading up to the prosecution and execution of 30 Africans, mostly slaves, for their alleged involvement in a criminal conspiracy to kill scores of white people in New York City.
8. Write a concise and effective conclusion.