Making History: A Guided Exploration of Historical Inquiry

Corroborating Facts Across Sources:

How do the facts and information I gathered compare across sources? 

Now that I've gathered and evaluated evidence and sources, I want to corroborate some of the facts surrounding the event.   Corroborating facts makes them more convincing.  The more sources that corroborate a fact, the more likely it is to be true.  

I want to find out if my sources agree on the facts and their opinion about the event, or if they disagree.  I also want to see if the bias of the source important in shaping the information the source gives.  Some facts emerged that seem especially important to my inquiry.  These facts, and how each source addressed them helps me corroborate information about the event. 

Listing the facts:

The some facts were:

• There was a history of tension between the soldiers and Boston townspeople
• One side was to blame for the fight at the ropewalks
• The crowd moved toward/away from the soldiers right before the Massacre
• The crowd did/did not provoked the soldiers right before the Massacre
• The soldiers had a reason for firing into the crowd 

I also want to connect how the documents considered these facts in light of the bias I already uncovered.  To do this, I used a table to organize my data, corroborate the facts and help me see the 'big picture.'

Comparing facts across sources:

(to enlarge the page and see the table in more detail, press 'Ctrl' and '+' at the same time)

Now I have a much clearer idea of what each document says and what its bias is.  I'm ready to put the pieces of my inquiry together and take the next step:  putting the evidence to work for my essential question. 

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Take Action: 
Corroborate information across sources

• list the facts
• compare the facts across sources
• consider conflicting accounts
• consider the bias of the sources