First, he had made the announcement on September 22nd after a technical victory at Antietam and followed it up with victory at Perryville.
While the EP did not become effective until Jan 1, 1863 it was already a done deal.
The Union was always in need of a victory, of course. But that does not mean that Lincoln or any of his generals fought battles expecting to lose or fought battles with no tactical or strategic purpose.
Lincoln was still ticked off at McClellan, and had just driven Burnside
Burnside was a grown adult who made his own decisions. If he felt he was "driven" to make bad decisions, he should have resigned.
Lincoln was also goading Rosecrans into making the same sort of mistake out West, which resulted in Murfreesboro
You mean that the President expected his generals to do their jobs, instead of sitting around doing nothing? What should the Union have done instead? Refused to capitalize on the gains at Perryville and given the Confederates a few extra months to recoup?
Never mind the fact, that it was winter, it was cold and rainy, and the roads in terrible shape.
Oh well, time to quit then.
Better to lose men to disease in winter quarters and get nothing done than to lose men to combat and achieve something, right?
And there was no real strategic objective except to "destroy the Confederate Army,"
What better strategic objective could there have been?
What other point could there have been to any Union victory?
You end an insurrection by ending the ability of your enemy to put effective forces in the field - not by building earthworks and hoping they will go away.
which nobody had any specific plan on how to accomplish at that point.
The McClellan plan was to wait months for everything to line up exactly perfectly, then fight a setpiece battle and then wait several months more for the stars to align again. Twelve weeks before Murfreesboro the Union had abandoned that hopeless strategy and began a new one - continually giving the enemy battle.
It was a strategy that took time to get right, but when it came together it turned out to be devastating.
After the battle, both armies retreated back to where they started
When he started, Rosecrans was in Nashville and he ended up in Murfreesboro. When Bragg started he was in Murfreesboro and he ended up in Tullahoma.
and sat there until the late spring.
Bragg was bottled up in a poorly-settled area known for its poor provisioning and Rosecrans had Nashville in his rear as an excellent logistics base.
Rosecrans was able to increase his effectives by 40% while taking Bragg off the chessboard for 6 months as Grant ramped up the Vicksburg campaign.
When Rosecrans did move, he forced Bragg to Chattanooga.
Pointless.
You can say that as often as you want, but the historical facts contradict you.
As a result of Stones River, the Confederate forces became a nonfactor in Kentucky and Tennessee.
What had once been an army of northern expansion threatening the Union's West became - as a direct result of Stones River - an almost completely defensive army trying to prevent the Union from entering Georgia and splitting the Confederacy in half.
One may point out, as Lincoln did, that Scripture describes rain as falling equally on the just and the unjust.
Bad weather affected the Confederates as much as it did the Union forces.