Ferguson was a man with a murder tally in the dozens. He well earned the death sentence. I'm more familiar with Champ's protege, John Gatewood. After service under Ferguson early in the war, Gatewood started his own Confederate murdering franchise under the sponsorship of General Wheeler to harass Sherman's rear in North Georgia. From the Georgia mountains, his gang would sweep into Tennessee for fun and profit. (murdering Unionists and robbery) On his well documented raid into Polk County Tennessee his gang murdered at least a dozen men in cold blood, the higlight perhaps being when they pumped a half dozen bullets into the face of a wounded man right in front of his mother. Besides large raids like this other guerrilla gangsters in small free lance groups often operated in the wake of the regular reb cavalry.
At the end of the war Gatewood and much of his gang fled to Texas where I suspect they did their part in the making of the legend of the lawless West.
It's ironic to hear the latter-day whining about Sherman when the Confederacy fostered outlaws like Ferguson, Gatewood, Anderson and Quantrill not to mention the routine oppressiveness of local Confederate government.