Agreed.
However, this was not an uncommon proceeding for the time and place. Frontier Americans played very rough. See Huck Finn.
My point is that such things were common. They happened for all kinds of reasons. Prominent abolitionists, for example, were tarred and feathered. Some were murdered by mobs.
One of the best ways to get tarred and feathered, surviving the experience if you were lucky, was to become overly friendly with the neignbors’ female family members. The early Mormons, and most specifically Joseph Smith, seemed to have a real talent for this.
I find it odd that theological disagreement is given as THE reason for this and other attacks, when they can probably be explained more easily by the normal response, for the time, of outraged husbands, fathers and brothers.
Joseph Smith was hated mostly for his spiritual insight and revelations. I believe that’s why he was tarred and feathered and eventually murdered in cold blood.