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What about one of the few times the Southern forces got into a Northern town of any size, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and burned it just as thoroughly as Columbia was enflamed?

Chambersburg was in retaliation for Union General Hunter's burning of the Shenandoah Valley a month before. General Sheridan had ordered the Shenandoah Valley be made a desert and a barren waste, and Hunter complied. Destruction of civilian property and harassment of women and children seems to be a common theme of Federal troops led by Sheridan, Hunter, Sherman, and Butler.

See: Shenandoah to Chambersburg. The letter to General Hunter quoted on this web site was published in Southern newspapers of the time. You can find it in The Daily Picayune of New Orleans.

I forgot the atrocities of Union General Wild or Wilde (the name is spelled both ways in newspaper reports of the times). Here is a letter to General Wilde complaining about the behavior of his troops in North Carolina.

Headquarters Forces on Blackwater, Franklin, Va, January 1864
Gen. Wilde, commanding Colored Brigade, Norfolk, Va. Sir – Probably no expedition, during the progress of this war, has been attended with more utter disregard for the long-established usages of civilization or the dictates of humanity, than was your late raid into the country bordering the Albemarle. Your stay, though short, was marked by crimes and enormities. You burned houses over the heads of defenseless women and children, carried off private property of every description, arrested non-combatants, and carried off ladies in irons, whom you confined with negro men. Your negro troops fired on Confederates after they surrendered, and they were only saved by the exertions of the more humane of your white officers. Last, but not least, under the pretext that he was a guerrilla, you hanged Daniel Bright, a private of Company L, 62d Georgia Regiment (cavalry), forcing the ladies and gentlemen whom you held in arrest to witness the execution. Therefore, I have obtained an order from the general commanding for the execution of Samuel Jones, a private of Company B, 5th Ohio, whom I hang in retaliation. I hold two more of your men -in irons- as hostages for Mrs. Weeks and Mrs. Mundin. When these ladies are released, these men will be relieved and treated as prisoners of war.
Col. Joel R. Griffin

Union officers had threatened to hang to the two civilian women mentioned in the letter above if anyone was hanged in retaliation for the hanging of Daniel Bright.

General Sheridan had ordered the Shenandoah Valley be made a desert and a barren waste, and Hunter complied.

I think you need to check your timeline. Chambersburg was burnt in July 1864 while Sheridan went through the Shenandoah Valley in September and October of 1864.

Supposedly Chambersburg was burnt in retaliation for the damage done to VMI by General Hunter. I think that the case can be made that VMI was a legitimate military target. It provided hundreds of officers to the confederate military. It would be as if the south had ever made it to West Point and burned it to the ground.

And if burning a town in retaliation is acceptable then if Sherman used Chambersburg as his reason for burning Atlanta then would you find that OK?

Chambersburg was in retaliation for Union General Hunter's burning of the Shenandoah Valley a month before.

Sorry, that won't wash. The Confederate leader initially demanded a ransom not to burn the town. When the townsfolks couldn't get the money up in the short allotted time, then the fires were started.

An act of a brigand, not a soldier.