Hi all!
I wouldn't ask if I wasn't desperate! I hope you guys don't mind, I've tried all manner of google-fu and searching the Chicago Manual to no avail. Maybe it doesn't happen or maybe it's something I shouldn't do? Any and all help with me greatly appreciated!
Okay, real question here: In a footnote, I'm explaining the founding of a political party. I have information from one source and a quote on their M.O. from another source.
So it looks like this:
^5 Political party was founded in 1890, by some guy. They wanted to accomplish "this" by doing "all these crazy things."
Sentence 1 comes from one source, sentence 2 from another. How would I cite that whilst already in a footnote? Or should I stick to one source? My apologies if that's not very clear, but thank you so so much for your time.
Chicago 14.33-14.34 (16th edition) seem to be the most relevant to your situation. I think you might be thinking too hard about this (or I'm totally misunderstanding what you're looking for). It's perfectly acceptable to format your footnote like:
Political party was founded in 1890, by some guy. They wanted to accomplish "this" by doing "all these crazy things." Source citation for the first sentence; source citation for the second sentence.
The source citations should follow the order in which the information they support are presented. But I see how it could be misinterpreted that source 1 is the source of the quote. To avoid this, sometimes you'll see parentheticals in footnotes like this:
Political party was founded in 1890, by some guy (Source citation for the first sentence). They wanted to accomplish "this" by doing "all these crazy things" (Source citation for the second sentence).
Although mid-note parentheticals are not specifically endorsed by Chicago style, it's generally acceptable by most presses. Personally, I'm not a big fan of sprinkling citations in the middle of an explanatory footnote, especially if the note is particularly long and complicated or there are a lot of sources. To me, it breaks up the text too much.
In some ways, Chicago isn't a great style for academic history. It's philosophically against long notes of any sort and its direction on odd sources like manuscripts is pretty thin. I think this question you've brought up only reflects that Chicago was written as a general guide and not necessarily a guide to academic or history writing.
Another possible solution that's sometimes feasible (but not always) is to slightly tweak your text to make it more apparent what source belongs to each sentence. Something like:
According to political historian XYZ, political party was founded in 1890, by some guy. An 1891 letter drafted by party leaders stated that they wanted to accomplish "this" by doing "all these crazy things." XYZ, Book by XYZ, 48-54; Letter by Party Leaders, 12 March 1891, in Published Collection of Documents, 3-5.
My example is really ungraceful, but I hope you get the idea. You can slip in names or dates or some other info that ties who is saying what in your footnote to the source citation that uses the same names or dates. It's really easy to clutter up your writing that way, so be warned, but it's a nice strategy when there's a particular reason to be extra clear to readers about your sources.