What were the short term effects of the Lincoln-Douglas debates?

The short term effect is that the Southerners believed that Abraham Lincoln was an abolitionist and also felt betrayed by Stephen Douglas's suggestion that territories could refuse to grant slavery legal protection.

Explanation:

Lincoln-Douglas debates, series of seven debates between the Democratic senator Stephen Douglas and Lincoln Abraham.

Lincoln and Douglas were not simply campaigning for themselves but also for their respective political parties. The main focus of these debates was slavery and its influence on American politics and society-specifically the slave power, popular sovereignty, race equality, emancipation.

Lincoln, an obscure former state representative, argues that the nation would eventually encompass all slave states or all free states, and nothing in between. He cites the end of the Missouri Compromise and the Dred Scott decision as evidence that slavery is spreading into the Northern states.

Lincoln thought that the national government should ban slavery from expanding into new territories while Douglas thought popular sovereignty should decide whether the territories wanted slavery or not.