Well, this is the Burnside who bungled Fredericksburg we're talking about.......
Yeah, but someone should have noticed it.
In an even more Wallbanger moment there was a possibility to roll up Lee's lines if he'd put the full weight of the attack there and held him at Marye's Heights with a token demonstration. Either way, he wins and Lee is in deep shit if he has to move a lot of his army for a fight in the open.
Yeah. Not a good possibility, but some chance. And wasn't the division which made the penetration Meade's?
Well, even with generals-in-chief like McClellan and Halleck who tended to have more narrow visions the Union was able to bisect the Confederacy for the first of the two times it did so and then actually get Chattanooga. However it's not so easy to see them winning the war so soon as they did without someone who like Grant could co-ordinate army groups at the same time.
Fair enough.
I'm not so sure, a Confederate victory at Pea Ridge would have limited opportunities for Donelson-like strokes and would have made that part of the Trans-Mississippi one of the two strategic areas there (the other, of course, is New Orleans).
I suppose, but its still not an area that produces very much in the way of supplies - so the more the Confederates can tie up Union troops without having to tie up large numbers themselves, the better.