1. I think I've found what might be the closest historical parallel to Trump's rallies--the scores of fawning, "patriotic addresses" that localities wrote up and sent to President Adams during the Quasi War with France in the summer of 1798, and to which he then responded.
https://twitter.com/SethCotlar/status/1095738937123889153
2. Most of these "patriotic addresses" were published in the local newspaper and then reprinted by other Federalist newspapers to demonstrate how much the public purportedly supported President Adams's sabre rattling vis a vis the French. It was the 1798 version of going viral.
3. A Federalist printer then collected all of these addresses (and Adams's responses) into a book. People subscribed to pay for its publication, and their names were inscribed at the end of the book, a public testimonial to their patriotic/partisan fervor. 
4. The addresses are quite repetitive, & most follow the pattern established in this one from NJ. Lots of "Sir's" (like in Trump's speeches) and lots of talk of a fellow citizens who are "deluded" and "degraded" enough not to join in the "one voice" of the true patriots.
5. For his part, Adams told each of the localities that addressed him that no one loved him and the country more than they did (sound familiar?). He also echoed back the language about how "degraded and deluded" some Americans were not to support his foreign policy.
6. Another interesting dimension of the political culture of 1798 is that this is when the Illuminati Conspiracy makes its first appearance in America. John Robison's "expose" of the Illuminati was a huge hit in America in the summer of 1798. babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.…
7. The Federalist party line in 1798 was that the Jeffersonians were working in leagues with the French and the Illuminati to destroy all of the nation's churches, take away everyone's private property, and replace the traditional family with Jacobin free love.
8. Pardon the crass promotion, but I discuss this episode at length in Chapter 3 of this book. amazon.com/Tom-Paines-Ame…
9. The summer of 1798 also brought us the Alien and Sedition Acts--laws intended to punish journalists Federalists deemed unfairly critical and deport immigrants they saw as a threat to the nation. Plus ca change.
10. Not that history is destiny...but it's worth noting that the Alien and Sedition Acts played a key role in putting the Federalist Party on the road to extinction, a process that was completed by 1815.
11. The entire collection of Addresses to and from Adams in 1798 can be found here. books.google.com/books?id=188BI…
12. Lest anyone get the wrong impression, John Adams and Donald Trump have almost nothing in common. Adams *wrote* more books than Donald Trump, by his own account, has read.
13. That said, the political culture of the Federalists in 1798-9 bears more than a little familiarity to the political culture of the contemporary GOP.
14. Not least in the extent to which both Trump and the Federalists of 1798 liked to talk about domestic "enemies" from whom the President will defend the nation.
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