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 characters , he <WSD>set</WSD> an example followed by many after him . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  establish as the highest level or best performance