The Tall Target

The Tall Target is a 1951 crime film starring Dick Powell as a police sergeant who tries to stop the assassination of Abraham Lincoln at a train stop as Lincoln travels to his inauguration. It is based on the alleged Baltimore Plot.

On February 22, 1861, he boards the Night Flyer Express train bound for Baltimore and Washington, where Inspector Reilly an uncredited Regis Toomey is to give him his train ticket. However, Kennedy cannot find his friend. Without a ticket, he is forced to get off by conductor Homer Crowley Will Geer, and there are no more tickets to be had. As the train starts pulling away, Kennedy sprints aboard anyway. Among the other passengers are Mrs. Charlotte Alsop Florence Bates, an antislavery writer Lance Beaufort Marshall Thompson, a soldier from Georgia who plans to resign and enlist in the Confederate army his sister Ginny Paula Raymond and their slave Rachel Ruby Dee.After much searching, Kennedy finally discovers Reillys body on the exterior platform of a car, but the corpse slips off the train as he is reaching for it. When he returns to what should have been his berth, he finds an imposter Leif Erickson claiming to be him and in possession of his ticket. The conductor is summoned. Fellow passenger Jeffers vouches for Kennedy and gives him a spare ticket to share his compartment. ........

Source: Wikipedia