No, that's why we are fortunate to have had those Southern ladies near by to document the Confederate torture of Robert Carter and General Wheeler's complicity in the war crime of 9/27/1863.
I see in a link you provided in May 2009 that General Wheeler showed that the two Carters were not bushwhackers, bushwhackers apparently being appropriate to be killed according to the policy of that time. However, it sounds like Wheeler disproved the possibility that they were bushwhackers. He and his men laughed at the suggestion that the Carters were bushwhackers. The Carters, whether they were bushwhackers or not, were killed off in the woods by cavalrymen shortly after the interview with Wheeler.
Assuming the story is true and that the Carters were not bushwhackers, Wheeler's lapse is that he did not arrest and charge the people who did the killing or make it clearer beforehand that the cavalrymen were not to kill the Carters. That is bad indeed.
Did Sherman have the same kind of lapse? Yes, most certainly. Consider the account of the mayor of Columbia on page 334 of Link. The mayor and Sherman found the body of a black, shot in the heart. Sherman asked who did it. Federal soldiers said they had killed the black for making insolent remarks. Sherman said that was wrong and told them to bury the black. No arrests were made, and Sherman went on his way.
Heck, there wasn't even a suspicion that the black was a bushwhacker. He simply mouthed off at the Federals.
Sherman, of course, was guilty of many more occasions where he did not try to stop crimes from happening. Simms, that witness of what went on in Columbia, says that Sherman and his officers were seen all over the city but apparently saw nothing that needed stopping. According to Simms there was robbery going on on virtually every street corner.
The morning after Columbia was burned, Sherman told the mayor and other witnesses that his soldiers burned the city. Thus, Sherman's account agrees with what Captain Pepper said the soldiers told Pepper.