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 set an example followed by <WSD>many</WSD> after him . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  a quantifier that can be used with count nouns and is often preceded by `as' or `too' or `so' or `that'; amounting to a large but indefinite number