your off the Constitutional farm Salamander. these were death threats against specific and named people.
it does not matter under what context.
at the Boston Tea party something happened that should not have: torture by a mob.
The first recorded incident in America was in 1766: Captain William Smith was tarred, feathered, and dumped into the harbor of Norfolk, Virginia, by a mob that included the town's Mayor. He was picked up by a vessel just as his strength was giving out. He survived, and was later quoted as saying that "...[they] dawbed my body and face all over with tar and afterwards threw feathers on me." As with most other tar-and-feathers victims in the following decade, Smith was suspected of informing on smugglers to the British Customs service.
The punishment appeared in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1767, when mobs avenged themselves on low-level employees of the Customs service with tar and feathers. In October 1769, a mob in Boston attacked a Customs service sailor the same way, and a few similar attacks followed through 1774 (the tarring and feathering of customs worker John Malcolm received particular attention in 1774). Such acts associated the punishment with the Patriot side of the American Revolution. In March 1775, a British regiment inflicted the same treatment on a Massachusetts man they suspected of trying to buy their muskets.[citation needed] There is no case of a person dying from being tarred and feathered in this period.
During the Whiskey Rebellion, the punishment was inflicted on Federal tax agents by local farmers.
In the early years of the Latter Day Saint movement during the early-to-mid 1800s, many of its adherents, including founder Joseph Smith, were tarred and feathered as a way to pressure the early LDS into leaving town or renouncing their beliefs.
