Yancey gradually ran afoul of President Davis on matters of policy, although he was not one of Davis's most extreme critics. Their differences accelerated in a series of letters exchanged after May 1863, and no final resolution was reached. In Congress, Yancey and Benjamin Hill of Georgia, who had previously clashed in 1856, had their differences over a bill intended to create the Confederate Supreme Court erupt into physical violence. Hill hit Yancey in the head with a glass inkstand, knocking Yancey over a desk, and onto the floor of the Senate. The physical attack on Yancey by Hill within the Confederate Congress was kept secret for months, and in the ensuing investigation it was Yancey, not Hill, who was censured.