The odd thing about the fame of the March Across Georgia is that all parties involved agreed that Sherman’s men were MUCH harsher marching across South Carolina than across Georgia.
Yet you almost never hear a word about that campaign.
While our present rules of engagement might indict Sherman as a war criminal, he never did anything remotely similar to what the Allies did in WWII. If Sherman is a war criminal, then so are MacArthur, Churchill, Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower.
I think terms such as "War Criminal" and "Crimes against humanity" are highly dependent upon whether or not you are in a position of power.
We like to think we are objective, but as has been pointed out, the difference between Heroes and "War Criminals" is whether or not their side won the war.
Yet you almost never hear a word about that campaign.
1) The song. The book. The movie.
2) South Carolinians may have had more guilty feelings about history and the war.
3) They also had more of an established state identity at that point, so maybe Sherman didn't bulk as large in their collective memory, because they had different stuff to remember.
Also, the March through Georgia may have been a bigger story at the time. People weren’t sure where Sherman was or what he was up to. “Destructive war” looked to be something new to many people. By the time Sherman got to Columbia, the story was old news.
Sherman himself said that the Carolinas were much more difficult. He got quite a surprise at Bentonville, North Carolina:
http://www.nccivilwar150.com/history/bentonville.htm