Despite generations of pro-Confederate propaganda, there's no historical evidence of mass rapes or murder by any Union army, including Sherman's.
As for "pillage", that term describes the Confederate army whenever it left the Confederacy (which was more often than people want to admit), and only fails to describe Confederate army behavior within the Confederacy by the legal fiction of worthless money used to requisition its supplies.
As for Sherman's "tough love", it's fair to say: he understood the South better than most, and what it would take to defeat them.
Since we are in revisionist la la land I’d say if I could go back in time I would like to put a Lapua .338 sniper rifle in a confederate sharpshooters hands somewhere along the line on Sherman’s march from Atlanta to Savannah. We could have loved him back. :-)
Where is the southern propaganda? All I have seen since
childhood is history as written by northern propagandists.
How can you deny that Sherman’s march to the sea was pillage? The South was utterly destroyed for 100 years.