This argument does not seem to apply very well to Japan and Germany, whose cities we burned without thinking about dallying on our way to unconditional surrender. The waring parties succede best post bellum when the victory is clear.
Then recall what we did afterward-- the Marshall Plan, massive help in rebuilding their countries both materially and socially.
Compare and contrast that to what the North did to the South-- looting carpetbaggers, ruinous taxes and disenfranchisement of all but the lowest level Confederate veterans. Lincoln would have done a much better job of reconstruction than the looters who played the two well-meaning but incompetent administrations which followed him like a fiddle. In some ways the damage done to the south in the 12 years after the war exceeded the damage done during the four years of war and we are still living with the part of that sorry legacy which elevated grievances, revenge and equal results (as defined by our modern carpetbaggers) over forgiveness, individual effort and equal opportunity.
Or did it just set the stage for the revenge of reconstruction?
When southern raiders went north and burned the steel mills owned by Thaddeus Stevens (one of the Radical Republicans who advocated and engineered the harsh postbellum treatment which Lincoln opposed), they were careful not to destroy the hovels where his workers lived near the mills.