Impressed by the strength of anti-black racism, especially in his home states of Indiana, Illinois, and Kentucky, Lincoln concluded because whites would never allow blacks to live in America as equals, they would be better off migrating voluntarily to a colony outside the United States, ideally in Central America or the Caribbean. He had little faith in the program of the American Colonization Society, whose goal was to colonize American blacks in Liberia, on the West African coast. In a speech at Peoria, Illinois (transcribed after the fact by Lincoln himself),