The historian Douglas Egerton offered a new perspective on Gabriel in his book "Gabriel's Rebellion: The Virginia Slave Conspiracies of 1800 & 1802" (1993). He based this on extensive primary research from surviving contemporary documents. Egerton found that Gabriel was a skilled blacksmith who was mostly "hired out" by his owner in Richmond foundries. Hiring out was the way that slaveholders earned money from their slaves, whom they needed less for labor as they had reduced the cultivation of tobacco as a crop. The market for tobacco was depressed, but Virginia planters also had to deal with depleted soils because of the crop. Slaveholders leased skilled slaves for jobs available in Virginia industries. Egerton concluded that Gabriel would have been stimulated and challenged at the foundries by interacting with co-workers of European, African and mixed descent. They hoped Thomas Jefferson's Republicans would liberate them from domination by the wealthy Federalist merchants of the city. In that environment, Gabriel also would have heard about the uprising and struggles of slaves in Saint Domingue.