Making sense of Gabriel's Conspiracy requires more than analyzing the way Gabriel and his lieutenants organized their attempt to overthrow slavery and analyzing the dynamics of the betrayal that undercut their attempt. It also entails studying the ways that those who lived through the conspiracy made sense of it. One (and only one) of the things that the conspiracy represented was an assertion that Virginians of African descent had a rightful claim to the state's revolutionary tradition, a claim their masters failed to recognize. Elite Virginians, then, faced a dual challenge upon discovering Gabriel's plan. First, they had to crush the incipient rebellion. Then, they had to formulate explanations of the conspiracy that undercut Gabriel's implicit claims by placing slavery in a narrative of Virginia's history, society, and culture. Black Virginians also forged understandings of Gabriel's Conspiracy, and at least one enslaved man left a coded trace of his interpretation of Gabriel's and by extension Black Virginians' place in the state's history. In making sense of Gabriel, Black and White Virginians developed conflicting interpretations not only of the conspiracy itself but of the place of race and slavery in the state's history and of what it meant to be a Virginian.

When Pharoah and Tom told Mosby Sheppard of the impending insurrection, they unleashed a reaction that explains much about White Virginians' vision of their world. During the last four months of 1800, White Virginians struggled first to defeat and then to understand their bondmen's attempt to win freedom. Governor James Monroe began by doubting the reality of the slave conspiracy.