If the theme of your paper is "The Significance of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address" and one source says that the speech was important in raising the morale of Northern troops in the Civil War while another says that Lincoln’s speech was hardly noticed, how do you decide who is correct?

• First, remember that history papers are not science projects. There is not always one correct answer.

But if one source was more reliable on the significance of Lincoln's speech, how can you find out?

• You can read other authors and see whether they agree with a particular conclusion about the speech.
• You can also do some detective work of your own. Find newspaper articles from the time of the speech and see if it is mentioned. Old newspapers are what historians call primary sources. A primary source was created at the time the event occurred. If other scholars and primary sources favor one explanation over the other, then that explanation is probably more reliable.