Looks like Sam Houston, if indeed he ever made that statement which you allege to his name without a source, was proven wrong at the ballot box.
The same thing happened elsewhere in states with referendums.
Virginia Secession Referendum, May 23, 1861: 132,201 for, 37,451 against
Tennessee Secession Referendum, Jun. 8, 1861: 104,913 for, 47,238 against.
Your data don't disprove General Houston's position. Secession didn't come to a vote in most of the seceded states, so-called. That fact would tend to support his contention.
Walt
First off, YOU haven't even provided a source for that so-called quote you attribute to Houston. You posted it therefore it is your burden to provide, at minimum, a date and location for independent verification.
Second, if the quote is authentic, it does indeed disprove much of what Houston says. As to the sentiments of his own state, Texas, it DIRECTLY shows that he was dead wrong. His side lost the referendum there in a landslide despite him personally leading the campaign against secession.
It also shows that secession passed in a landslide in two other confederate states including the largest, Virginia.
From that we can further deduce several things. First, it is generally undisputed that, excluding the disputed border states where loyalties split throughout the populations, the largest hotbed of unionism within the CSA was in the Tennessee mountain regions. No other state to the south or west of there had even a remotely sizable unionist movement by comparison. Yet Tennessee, despite all those unionists, still voted to secede in a landslide.
So are you to tell me that, based upon an unsourced alleged word of Sam Houston that proved to be dead wrong in his own state and at least two others, all of the states to the south and west of Tennessee, of which not one had a unionist movement even remotely resembling the former in size, were really against secession?