Most historians these days do not subscribe to the notion that there is a "correct version" of history. Most historians will even dispute the notion that there is a single history. Rather, historians believe that histories are narratives which are constructed by people, and which can be narrated and constructed in different ways.

I have explained this in detail in this thread. If you have any questions after reading that, do let me know.

Edit:

Yeah, /u/Polybios's post is the one to read. They can drop the mic. That being said I'll leave up my own comparatively half-baked explanation in case anyone is interested.

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Our Theory Thursday post has just gone up and I might encourage you to x-post this there as it's pinned to the front page of the sub.

That being said, my own response would be that you need to temper your own expectations, but that you're on the right track because you actually identify some of the reasons why that is.

Let me explain what I mean:

unless you are on the very bleeding edge things are VERY certain on what is "correct"

historians will disagree even on very seemingly basic accounts of what occurred. Even up into very recent history (last 100 years)

what's the best way of finding out the most correct version of history without people putting political slant into historical events.

The problem here is that historians, generally speaking, are constantly on the bleeding edge. Not in all fields, but as an ongoing process all the time. You make the case that proximity to the present ought to give us a more reliable view of what actually happened but also want such a view to be free from slant or bias.

The exact opposite is the case. Imagine if I asked you to write a history of today, October 27th, 2016. And it had to stand "correct" for the next 100 years. What do you think the odds are that this person 100 years from now would read your work and think: "Ah yes, here is an objective, slant-free, informative and comprehensive view of the historically relevant information from the 27th of October 2016."

It's about 0 right? Like, you might be able to factually state what the headlines were today, but who is to say that in the grand scheme of things any of those headlines would be historically relevant in 100 years. And of course your background and biases will inherently alter your view of what is important and what you have access to (e.g. what languages you speak.)

And that's in an ideal circumstance dealing with someone who is trying to be as objective as possible.

Historians aren't so lucky. We can try to eliminate political bias all we want but when our only materials, in some instances, might be intentionally politically biased you can see how tricky that might become.

The comparison to science is a good one because highlights the challenges that historians operate under. We can't run experiments. We can't set up control groups. We can't isolate variables. We're relying on questionable and incomplete data sets.

Moreover, to go with one of the basic preconditions of a science, not all historical claims are even falsifiable. We might say: "John thought X", we might even have very good evidence of John thinking X, he might have even wrote "I think X". But we have no way of actually knowing whether or not John thought X.

That's not to say that we're nihilists and that all history is unknowable. It's just quite often the most interesting questions in history are the ones that we don't have an answer to or might not have enough data to answer. Those are the questions will swing most wildly in their accounts.

Which is also one of the most important tasks an intellectual historian needs to do is to deal with the historiography of their field. Those middle and high school text books (which are of course, terrible, as an entire genre) might swing wildly on accounts, but by comparing the swings and understanding where the gaps lie we get a better picture of what the range of possibilities might look like.