Wiktionary
alt. To cover a person in sticky tar, then cover in feathers which stick to the tar; an archaic means of humiliating a person. vb. To cover a person in sticky tar, then cover in feathers which stick to the tar; an archaic means of humiliating a person.
Usage examples of "tar and feather".
We'll have to tar and feather him some day, and ride him out of town on a rail.
When my bank fell upon hard times, there were calls to tar and feather me&mdash.
As if that were not to be enough for anyone but little headway, if any, was made in solving the wasnottobe crime cunundrum when a child of Maam, Festy King, of a family long and honourably associated with the tar and feather industries, who gave an address in old plomansch Mayo of the Saxons in the heart of a foulfamed potheen district, was subsequently haled up at the Old Bailey on the calends of Mars, under an incompatibly framed indictment of both the counts (from each equinoxious points of view, the one fellow's fetch being the other follow's person) that is to see, flying cushats out of his ouveralls and making fesses immodst his forces on the field.
Finally they tar and feather him and ride him out of town on a rail.
So these crackers decide to protect their womenfolk and run this dang Choctaw right out of the settlement, maybe tar and feather him while they was at it.