There was a brief correspondence between Hood and Sherman over the period of a few days prior to Sherman's moving on the city...it's pretty fascinating. In a nutshell, Sherman offered to assist in the evacuation of civilians and cautioned Hood against locating his guns and fighting positions in and among civilians.
Can't say he wasn't warned.
A sympathetic (post-Atlanta) anecdote regarding Sherman can be found at General Sherman's Georgia Romance.
Mostly because he believed in "total war, and total peace," as he put it himself, and did not support the persecution of the South that took place during Reconstruction under the Radicals.
As a matter of fact, he was an honored guest at many Confederate Veterans Camps all across the South, including the Eufaula AL Camp, of which my gg grandfather was commander at the time.
Probably he wouldn't have been as well received in Atlanta, but the real hatred of Sherman didn't start until he and the rest of the participants in the WBTS were dead.