In their focus on defending and justifying the Confederacy to Yankees, Southerners are often largely unaware of Confederate home front misrule and oppressions. For future reference, here's a link to a preview of book you might want to check out sometime. It details a Confederate reign of terror in a Tennessee county far worse than most of what I've ever heard Sherman accused of. Persecution of old men, organized government extortion, gun confiscation, flag desecration, murder, eyeball gouging, religious persecution and election stealing are some of the Confederate crimes detailed. In some ways it was similar to Democrats today.
CONFEDERATE CRIMES
I looked at the title of this book and the comments by the author, who does not attempt to hide his biases, and if this is the sort of sources that you are using to form your views, you are never going to find the truth. I would also suggest that Tennessee, Kansas, and Missouri had their own internal wars going on. I am certain that many horrible things must have occurred, before, during, and after the Civil War. But compared to the Union's systemic destruction of the South, and its open warfare on civilians, such as we see in Sherman's march, the South is rather benevolent. We can all find books, articles, and “scholars” that will support whatever view we hold.
There are always going to be people that believe that the reason for the Civil War was slavery, and that the Union Army was on some Holy Crusade. Nothing that anyone is going to say is going to change their views. I am certain that others have a romanticized view of the South, too. Nothing anyone is going to say is going to change their minds.
The very people that are most interested in this subject are most likely the worse ones to trust. They tend to be emotionally involved and see things through their own spectacles.
Southerners are often largely unaware of Confederate home front misrule and oppressions. Argumentum ex "so's your old man" -- invalid form of argument, of the general form, "but your Honor, he needed killin'!"
The sole issue is whether the Union government and its polemarch, Abraham Lincoln, were justified in doing what they did, which was a war of conquest against free people, and the moral equivalent of enslavement (which they said they abhorred). They were not justified, they had no just cause. Whether or not Jefferson Davis had unpaid speeding tickets or four wives is irrelevant.