Sentence:  Augustus Baldwin Longstreet , a preacher and a college and university president in four Southern states , published the earliest of these backwoods sketches and in the character Ransy Sniffle , in the accounts of sharp horse-trading and eye gouging physical combat , and in the shockingly unliterary speech of his <WSD>characters</WSD> , he set an example followed by many after him . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  an imaginary person represented in a work of fiction (play or film or story)