Absolutely! Getting things right is very important to me, and it's not just the details, either, but the society and larger context. The latter is actually much harder. It takes a lot of time and effort to really get the "feel" for an era. You can know what kind of gun was available, and that's good, but it's also important to know how society at that time would have reacted, say, to an unmarried woman of 30 (and how the reaction would differ between, say, a 13-year old boy and a 40-something widow). (I'm talking about some circumstances in a current WIP; it came up in another thread here on AW.)
My method has been simply to read *a lot* in the eras I'm interested in, fiction and non-fiction, biographical and non-biographical. I watch/listen to CSPAN's American History programming (it's excellent). Primary sources are best for getting a feel for the lingo, and they can also send you on research tangents that lead you deeper into the era (like cricket [the sport] lingo...). Reading fiction gives you an idea of what's out there and how people today view the era, which isn't necessarily how it was viewed 50 years ago. I mean, 50 years ago, you wouldn't have had as much emphasis on women's experience. You have to contend with popular perceptions and misconceptions. (And nowhere is that more true than the Civil War, I think. I mean, GWTW is not a primary source, but it massively colors public perception of the war and Reconstruction.)
It's also important to have some idea of what the academic world is saying (hence me and CSPAN). For instance, there are still many and varied academic arguments about the Civil War. If you're going to write about the era, I posit that it's important to at least know about these discussions. They can give you a much more full and in-depth perception of the era. This is part and parcel of the above: what are people saying about the era?
As writers, it's up to us to kind of amalgamate all of this: the real history (or at least what we know) and what people today think/believe. It takes a lot of skill and knowledge and finesse to pull that all together.