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People bandy that epithet loosely. In fact, considering the scale and geographic extent of his operations through Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina atrocities committed by Union forces against civilians (as opposed to their properties and the infrastructure which supported the Confederate war effort) were remarkably few. His troops who were found to have committed rapes and murder of civilians were tried and hanged. Even historians sympathetic to the Southern cause grudgingly admit that.

And Confederate troops tended to execute black Union prisoners en masse when they could. Isn't that a "war crime"? Were Lemay and "Bomber" Harris war criminals? They burned out entire cities filled with civilian women and children.

I've known enough people with your outlook to understand you're not open to persuasion. But if Sherman was a "war criminal" then there will not be any generals in any war for whom the title couldn't be applied.