In history and some other humanities courses, you may be asked to use the documentation system of The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010). In CMS style, superscript numbers (like this1) in the text of the paper refer readers to notes with corresponding numbers either at the foot of the page (footnotes) or at the end of the paper (endnotes). A bibliography is often required as well; it appears at the end of the paper and gives publication information for all the works cited in the notes.
text
A Union soldier, Jacob Thompson, claimed to have seen Forrest order the killing, but when asked to describe the six-foot-two general, he called him “a little bit of a man.”12
footnote or endnote
12. Brian Steel Wills, A Battle from the Start: The Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 187.
bibliography entry
Wills, Brian Steel. A Battle from the Start: The Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.