Her enthusiasm was started by a book she read in her childhood by Maturin Murray Ballou called "Fanny Campbell, the Female Pirate Captain", telling the story of Fanny Campbell on a privateer transport during the American Revolution while dressed as a man. Fanny stayed dressed as a man so as to seek after different experiences, to which Edmonds credits her longing to dress in drag. During the Civil War, on May 25, 1861, she enrolled in Company F of the second Michigan Infantry, otherwise called the Flint Union Grays. Later she masked herself as a man named "Franklin Flint Thompson," named after Flint, Michigan. She felt that it was her obligation to serve her nation. She from the start filled in as a male field nurse in campaigns under General McClellan, including the First and Second Battle of Bull Run, Antietam, the Peninsula Campaign, Vicksburg, Fredericksburg, and others. 