Jefferson was taken aback by the complaints. He had, he said, detected some tension between the two congressmen who had married daughters of his, but—typically for Jefferson—he had chosen not to inquire about the unease; avoiding overt conflict was a Jeffersonian specialty. “What acts of mine can have induced you to suppose that I felt or manifested a preference for [Eppes], I cannot conceive,” Jefferson soothingly wrote Randolph.
