Footnotes, endnotes or online notes?

[Wild Bill]

For what it is worth, I wrote Last Confederate Heroes for a general audience and used chapter notes accordingly. They do not distract from the text. Sic Semper was written for the historian, either by training or interest, hence the footnotes, some of which are quite lengthy. But then, Last Confederate Heroes has some really lengthy chapter notes, some of which delve into lengthy historiography (what historians have said about other historians). I used William Safire's Freedom, a novel with footnotes, and MacKinlay Kantor's Andersonville, a novel without footnotes and without quote marks, either, as my writing guides. No quotes, which indicated that much of the conversations were created out of whole cloth, caused much dismay among readers of LCH so I added quote marks to the second edition. The conversations can be recognized by real Booth fans as paraphrases of facts about the assassination and, dare I say it, Manhunt. E.g., I can read Michael Sharah's Killer Angels and tell you which Official Records report the quotes in it came from.