The traitors of whom we speak are of two classes, the leaders and the dupes. The latter, careless of the fact that even if a _sudden_ peace could be brought about it must overwhelm the country in financial ruin, believe in a restitution of the _status quo ante bellum_. They think that their leaders will, in unison with DAVIS and his colleagues, reunite, annul Emancipation, disavow the acts of the Lincoln Administration, and reëstablish Slavery. Cotton is again to be king, and all go on as of old, save that New England is to be thrown out of the confederacy. They are encouraged in this belief by lying or cunningly managed letters from the South, and by assurances that the confederate leaders are secretly working to this end and aim. 'We got along very well before the war,' is their constant complaint, 'and we could do as well again, were it not for the Emancipationists.' Among the lukewarm, the cowardly, the meanly selfish and avaricious, and the habitual grumblers, such doctrines are readily made plausible. Those especially, who measure the propriety of carrying on a war solely by the amount of success which they desire, and who are incapable of great thoughts and principles, are easily duped by intriguing villany. The leaders of these dupes have no faith whatever in restoring the Union. They have no desire to restore it. Men like Fernando Wood hope from their very hearts for a complete disintegration--the more thorough, for them, the better. They could never expect to command the ship, and so they are willing to wreck her, in the hope of each securing a fragment. Ruined in character in the eyes of all honest men, their names a byword for treason, and in most cases for literal crimes, political outcasts of the stamp who are said to vibrate between the legislature and the penitentiary, these desperadoes are now working with all their might to mass the cowardice of the North into a body powerful enough to do collectively, that for which an individual has in all countries and in all ages been judged worthy the gallows. But for this war they must have been confined to representing the dangerous classes of our cities--the ignorance and vice which finds in them congenial leaders. As it is, they hope for wider fields and more absolute sway.